


Every Ounce Of Light And Fury

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: The Chronicles of Impossibility [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, F/F, F/M, Memory Loss, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-08-19 17:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 50,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8219684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Had anyone asked her, Clara Oswald would have assured them that she was a perfectly ordinary woman, with an ordinary job, an ordinary commute and an ordinary flat. Yet increasingly, she was beginning to find that there were gaps in her life that she couldn't seem to explain, and then at night there were the dreams: dreams of space, and of time, and of a Scottish man in a blue box. When her reality fractures and she finally remembers the truth of who she is, she realises the magnitude of what she's forgotten... not only the Doctor, but their daughter too: a hybrid of their two races, and a threat to the entire universe if the prophecies are to be believed. In a race against time, Clara must attempt to reimmerse herself in her old life to save her family, but will she really break a billion billion hearts to save her own?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, after some time off to gather my thoughts and get this together, here it is at last, the sequel to [Looking For Something Dumb To Do](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6050947/chapters/13872559)! (Please note that you do _not_ need to have read it to read this - this will make sense as a standalone piece... but quick summary for context: Clara, River  & Twelve were living together as a married trio.)
> 
> The title comes from [Zeta Leonis](http://inkskinned.com/post/130580319489/we-never-heard-music-but-people-made-us-dance) by R.I.D.

Clara Oswald was, she would have assured anyone who asked, the epitome of normal. Normal flat, normal nine-to-five job, normal commute: she had normalness down pat; was the smiling posterchild for a perfectly ordinary life. She followed the same routine to the letter every day of every week, each hour carefully mapped out and accounted for as she maintained order over her life – she was the queen of her own dominion, and her dominion was occupied solely with marking or cooking or working. Whatever the time of day might be, Clara had plans, and to deviate from them was – as far as she was concerned – a deviation from optimum efficiency.

To the outside world Clara Oswald thus seemed, in many respects, to be a control freak. She had no issue with the term – secretly, she rather enjoyed the concept – but she had a strange nagging feeling surrounding the two words, as though they had been said to her a great many times… yet she was not entirely certain who by. She made a face when her colleagues cast the words into the space around her, grinning alongside them while feeling an ache in her chest, and she tried to ignore the strange itch she felt under her skin at those three innocuous syllables. People would ask her _how_ she did it, or _why_ she did it, and she would laugh – the sound a little hollow, for reasons she did not understand – and tell them she enjoyed order, that she enjoyed being organised, yet she was continuously aware that she was not telling the whole truth. A small lie, carefully designed to convince them of her omnipresent normality. 

Because the truth was that she was not, in fact, completely normal. Behind closed doors, Clara Oswald was fairly certain that she was going mad, and thus her sense of order was a carefully constructed façade intended to keep the reality of this fact from the world.

The problem was that it wasn’t the kind of mad that she could simply discuss with her GP. If she had done that, they’d probably either have dismissed her as a hypochondriac or diagnosed her as completely insane, and locked her up in an institution with padded walls – or at least so she envisioned, fuelled by a diet of Victorian literature consumed for class. No, it was not an all-consuming kind of madness that spurred her to seek help, but rather the insidious kind that crept up on her slowly, a kind of aching feeling that left her feeling empty and isolated, and so she kept herself busy to avoid pondering on the curious sensation of being incomplete that had a tendency to steal over her in moments of idleness.

Besides, she told herself, facing her GP would have involved attempting to explain curious behaviours and feelings, and Clara had no way to explain why she felt drawn to the most unlikely of things, which she had started to pocket surreptitiously: guitar picks, sunglasses, and pieces of chalk, until she’d filled a cardboard box with a motley array of bizarre objects and immediately consigned it to the rubbish bins, lest anyone learn of her kleptomaniac tendencies. 

Yet the stealing was the least of her concerns. For each day, weighing her down, she felt the same crushing sense of loss that had dogged her for months, rendering it an effort to smile or raise her gaze to look the world in the face. There was an ache in her chest that seemed to be almost physical in its intensity, and as she lay in bed each night and wept she would wrap her arms around herself securely in an attempt to alleviate the raw pain that tore at her heart. 

“Clara,” a colleague had told her one day, when she’d voiced her concerns about the magnitude of the grief she felt. “It’s probably cos of your dad, right? I know you took that big old sabbatical, but still… well I mean, what with your mum and all, you’re a…” they fell awkwardly silent, unwilling to say the word _orphan._ They made an uncomfortable face before continuing: “I mean, all that travelling you did must have helped a bit, but you’ve obviously been repressing things. That’s why you’re feeling like this.”

“Travelling?” she asked, feeling the same strange tug at her heartstrings that she felt at the words _control freak._ “Oh. Of course. Yeah. Travelling.” She waved a hand vaguely, not recalling the specifics of where she had been but certain it had been nice. “It was… yeah.” 

“Shame your camera broke, huh?” her colleague grimaced, then grinned at her wickedly. “Bet the photos would’ve been great. And James would’ve loved all your inevitable bikini shots.” 

“Did it?” she asked, furrowing her brow, finding her memory swimming in non-specificity, the details eluding her as she scowled minutely. “I mean. I don’t have any… yeah, it must have done. Huh. Shame.” 

“Thailand is great, right? I went in my gap year; it was amazing-”

“Thailand?” she cleared her throat a little, remembering herself and her lies. “I mean. Yeah, Thailand was… good.” _And I can’t remember the first thing about it,_ she thought to herself bitterly. _Superb. Spent all that money travelling, and for what?_  

Somehow, besides the travelling, there were a number of things that seemed… unusual. A number of moments that no longer made sense, as though they had been edited together clumsily by a director with little aptitude, flickering and disjointing over key moments and leaving her without explanation for a number of events in her life. She recalled Danny, and she recalled her sense of guilt surrounding him, but for what reason she had felt so culpable she could not fathom. She recalled becoming a teacher – although she couldn’t remember what had inspired her to leave the Maitlands’ – and she recalled there had been a significance to Coal Hill, although Google searches told her only of occasional peculiar happenstances there, none of which she felt any connection to. Maybe that was all it had been. Maybe she had Googled the school and found all the bizarre tales, and found herself drawn to the unusual, as she always had been. She attempted to shrug away the blanks as her mind processing the grief, even if late at night her loss of recollection troubled her, and she found herself hunting for old diaries or for clues, instead finding her flat devoid of anything to aid her memory.

 

* * *

 

It was at Coal Hill, early in the summer term, that Clara found herself deep in the caretaker’s cupboard, hunting determinedly for a packet of paper towels to take back to her classroom. She’d spilled her coffee, and she could’ve entrusted a student to fetch them, but that would have involved them dawdling and wasting time, and thus she had taken the opportunity to escape the stagnant air of her classroom and run the errand herself. As she rummaged through the shelves, her fingers brushed over the soft cotton of a long brown coat, bundled into a ball, and she gasped as a stabbing pain twisted through her brain, causing her to double over in agony, one hand clutched to her temple. “Okay, Oswald…” she muttered to herself, squeezing her eyes shut and crouching on the floor, taking deep breaths to allay the pain, which faded as quickly as it had begun. “Definitely cracking up now…” 

She chanced opening her eyes and stood, snatching up a nearby rag in lieu of anything more absorbent and fleeing back to her classroom, where she sat in almost mute silence for the rest of the day, afraid of invoking another… whatever _that_ had been. Migraine, perhaps, or stress related. She sank into bed with relief at the end of the day, palming a couple of paracetamol and not bothering with dinner, instead slipping straight into a sleep which was plagued with vivid dreams. 

_A tall man in that long coat, prowling around the school with a broom and a gadget she couldn’t place a name to. She couldn’t make out his face or his voice but she sensed his disdain as she stood before him with Danny, arm in arm, felt her anger at his petulance and his immaturity._

_She turned from him and she ran, waving something small and glowing, and she felt adrenaline coursing through her system as something followed her, something with a gun, something – she was suddenly certain – alien. There was an explosion, a warning shout, and…_

She awoke, tangled in her sheets and gasping for breath, feeling as though she had been running for hours, overwhelmed by the intensity of the dream. Padding into the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water with a shaky hand and sipped at it, trying to force her pulse to stop thundering, and it was then that the phone rang, shrill and insistent, cutting through the tranquillity of the night. 

She approached it warily, lifting the receiver from its cradle and placing it to her ear with caution. “It’s three am,” she croaked. “Whoever this is, it better be important.” 

“You’ve started to remember, haven’t you?” said a faintly familiar voice at the other end. “Clara, I’m so sorry, because this is going to hurt. But you have to remember. You _must_ remember.” 

“Who is this?” she asked, panic rising in her chest at the strange words, at the fact this person somehow knew what she had been feeling. “How do you…” 

“I can’t tell you that yet. But you _must_ remember.” 

“I…”

“Goodbye, Clara.”

The phone went dead in her hands.

 

* * *

 

That was the first night she dreamt of the tall man and the force of his emotions, but it was not the last. Each night after that, she would dream of them together in faraway places she could not hope to name, his hand sometimes warm in hers, but always there was the running, and the exhilaration, and the adrenaline that occurred in the face of danger. There was a train in space – _such a notion,_ she scoffed the next morning, half afraid and half amazed by what she had dreamt – and a bank on a distant planet; there were men made of metal and machines that looked like tin cans. The tall man feared those particularly, although she could not fathom why, until the nightmare came of being trapped inside one and she awoke screaming, understanding abruptly the paroxysms of fear that rolled from her companion in the presence of those monsters. 

She could not see his face, never his face, but she knew – with some degree of certainty – that he had grey hair, and an item of clothing that she was fond of, although she was never quite sure what it might be. She could not hear his voice but she felt that she did not need to, attuned as she was in the dreams to his emotions and his whims, able to read him just by being near to him. 

Each morning when she awoke, she would scrawl down the night’s happenings in a dusty old notebook she had found under her bed, the pages covered with scribbles and small pictures as she clumsily attempted to record the adventures she had seen – for she would not chance to use the word _dreamt_ , nor the word _lived,_ for she was unsure which could be considered true. Her ability to read her nightly companion seemed improbable to the point of fantasy, yet she felt a connection with him that made her heart ache when she awoke, unable to phrase what she was feeling in a manner that could be succinctly summarised with her pen. She knew him and he knew her, in a way that seemed quite unlike a dream, and she was growing increasingly certain that she was recalling something long forgotten. 

Particularly since the dreams were beginning to change in nature. No longer always running, no longer always fighting ridiculous monsters, but instead more moments of emotional intimacy, a connection between her and the tall man so palpable that she was surprised to find it did not enter the realm of the physical. Her heart sang when she was near him in the dreams and she felt his love for her as tangibly as she felt his arms embracing her. She began to awake with increasing reticence and tears on her face as she came to realise – slowly, with pain carved across her features – that she had lost something of tremendous importance. Three years of her life had been spent with him, that much she was certain of, as she battled to regain her memories each day, meeting only the block in her brain. Three years solely with him, and another three before that – interrupted by her life at Coal Hill, by Danny, by a thousand things which she instinctively categorised as “human things.” Yet still she could not see his face, or name him – still their adventures and their moments together remained as vague and intransigent as ghosts – leaving shadows on her heart, certainly, but refusing to permit her brain the ability to recall anything more of their time together.

 

* * *

 

“Right,” Clara muttered under her breath, as she stomped across the tarmac outside her block of flats, in a foul mood after a terrible day at work and compounded by her brain’s refusal to cooperate with any of her attempts to jog her own memory. The _Hypnotise Yourself into Remembering_ book she had bought on the internet had been useless. “So far, on the ‘reasons I have apparently, actually-and-literally lost my mind’ list, we’ve got: I’ve had a lobotomy, which seems highly unlikely.” 

She shoved open the door to her block and stumbled inside, weighed down by her bags of groceries. 

“I’d have noticed a scar. So, that’s a no to that idea. Potential reason two: I’ve had a really huge blow to the head, and forgotten quite a lot. Again. Seems unlikely. I’d have noticed if I’d whacked my head. I’d probably have died of a blood clot or something by now, or there’d be medical records, which there _aren’t_.”

She jabbed at the button for the lift, still muttering aloud in an attempt to understand herself. 

“Third: something to do with the weird dreams has messed with my head, and that’s why I can’t remember _anything fucking useful._ ” 

A neighbour passed her and gave her a sour look at her choice of language. 

“Morning, Mrs Andrews,” she said brightly, realising she probably looked a touch unhinged. “Lovely day.” 

“Not really,” the old lady muttered, entering the lift alongside Clara and pressing the button for their floor. “Haven’t you seen what the bloody council have done? Oh, they may tell me it wasn’t them, but I told them… who else would it have been, now, going along and repainting all the doors? Only on our floor mind you – proper odd that, but maybe it’s some new-fangled art scheme to have them all mismatching like?” 

“Repainting the doors?” Clara asked in confusion, as the lift arrived at their floor and she stepped out, keys in hand. “What col-”

She froze as she looked across the landing, her eyes widening as she took in the royal-blue sheen of each of the newly repainted doors, her heart hammering painfully in her chest. She knew that colour. She had seen that colour every night for weeks, knew what it represented, knew _who_ it represented. 

“Clara?” Mrs Andrews asked with concern, looking her up and down worriedly. “Are you alright, love? I know it’s a bit odd, but we can repaint them…” 

“M’fine…” she mumbled, feeling pain beginning to lance through her head and stumbling forwards with her keys, turning them in the lock and all but falling through her front door, slamming it behind her, dropping her shopping and staggering into her lounge. 

There upon the coffee table was a newspaper, the headline standing out at her in stark black and white, the letters an inch high and impossible to miss. 

 _Run you clever girl. And remember._  

“My head…” she whimpered, sinking onto the sofa and reaching for the paper, noticing then the small black box that rested upon it and snatching it up with trepidation. “My…” 

She opened the box and felt her heart stop as she looked down at the ring nestled inside: a diamond flanked by two sapphires, neatly engraved with words she couldn’t make out in the dimness of the room. 

“My engagement ring,” she said aloud with a certainty she didn’t understand, as a splitting pain burned through her mind and she clutched at her head, a scream rising from her chest as her vision began to darken. 

“I’m sorry,” came a familiar voice, and a blonde woman stepped into the lounge, grimacing apologetically. “This might hurt, but it’s for your own good, Clara.”

“Doctor…” she managed, and then everything went dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate supports Clara as her memory begins to return... and answers some of her more pressing questions. But are Kate's motives entirely selfless? Or is she motivated by something else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your wonderful feedback on chapter one! I hope you like chapter two as much!

Clara awoke in her own bed, bolting upright as panic surged through her and she clutched the covers to herself for reassurance. “Doctor?” she asked at once, looking around as the confusion of the past few months fell away. “Doc-” 

The door to her bedroom opened and Kate edged in with a cup of tea, beaming at Clara with evident relief. “Hello,” she began, setting the mug down on the nightstand and taking a seat at the end of the bed, before taking a fortifying breath and asking: “Remember me yet? This could be weird otherwise.”

“Kate Stewart,” Clara said at once, reaching for the mug with one shaking hand and sipping at the hot drink, returning Kate’s smile as she did so. “Of course I remember you.” 

“Yeah, well,” Kate made a face, clearly pleased at the development. “You didn’t the last time we spoke, so I figured I should probably check.” 

“Wait,” Clara narrowed her eyes as she felt realisation dawn on her. “It was you that rang me, wasn’t it? The night I first had the dreams? That weird as hell three am phone call.” 

“Yep,” the older woman looked down at her lap as she admitted: “We… we installed a couple of cameras around so we could keep an eye on you. Just for safety’s sake, you understand. Didn’t want you coming to any harm, you seemed quite confused.” 

“You…” Clara’s eyes widened in horror and she looked around her nervously, disconcerted by the news. “You installed _cameras_ in my flat?”

“And at Coal Hill… look, we were concerned!” Kate said defensively, holding up her hands in a placating gesture, trying to allay Clara’s impending anger. “You disappeared in the TARDIS for bloody months and then you just turned up, wandering around like a lost sheep with no idea who the hell you were or who the Doctor was or anything! We knew we couldn’t just come blundering in, because god alone knows what happened to you, and we sure as hell didn’t want another Donna Noble incident.” 

“Another what now?”

“Never mind,” Kate sighed, her defensiveness evaporating as she realised she needed to lay out the facts. “We worked out quite quickly that you’d been… tampered with. No idea how. We scanned you while you were out and there’s no retcon in your system, so it’s not likely to have been that – that’s usually much more short term. It’s likely you got…” 

“Hacked?” Clara suggested drily, unsure how serious her own suggestion was. “Maybe?” 

“Yeah. Something like that. Or hypnotised. Missy…” 

“It wasn’t Missy,” Clara said immediately, certain that the Time Lady was not responsible, despite her love of chaos. “This totally isn’t her style. She’s cruel, but she enjoyed the Doctor and I together too much to make me forget. She wasn’t involved in this – this is the kind of thing that would piss her off, not make her happy.” 

“All out of ideas then. What’s the last thing you remember doing with the Doctor?” 

“Urm,” Clara began, pausing and raising her hand to her temple, where a residual pain throbbed dully. “I don’t know; things are kind of… vague. Bit cloudy. I think I remember being in the TARDIS with him and… with River? I think? The phone was ringing. After that it’s really, really black, and then I was back in London and teaching again and being normal. Whatever normal might be.” 

“So whatever they’ve done, it’s pretty… deep,” Kate concluded, grimacing slightly at the prospect. “The memories should become clearer with the passage of time, don’t worry about those. But if you’ve still got dark patches…” 

“Patch. _Singular_. It’s just from the phone ringing onwards, I don’t remember anything _at_ _all_ then until I was back in London, and then I didn’t remember anything about the Doctor. Not until I was back here and seeing the doors and the paper and…” Clara looked to Kate, seeking an explanation. “Why did seeing my engagement ring make me remember?” 

“It’s an emotionally significant object, the most significant that we could think of that was yours. We figured it would trigger a positive recall response – and it did.” 

“But how…” Clara frowned slightly, turning a question over in her mind and failing to find an answer. “How did you find it? If my memory’s been messed up by someone, they’d have taken my ring and stuff like that, surely? They wouldn’t want me remembering anything by accident.” 

Kate sighed, looking down at the bed to avoid meeting Clara’s gaze as she broke the bad news. “It’s a replica,” she admitted. “We contacted the jewellers and had them create it for us. I don’t know what happened to yours, or to your wedding band. I’m sorry.” 

“Oh,” Clara said sadly. “Does this mean all my other stuff has just… gone, too? My diaries and…” she paused, certain there was something else, and she concentrated for a moment, trying to make sense of the flurry of images in her mind’s eye. “Why is River popping up so much in these memories?” 

“She…” Kate looked pained, taking Clara’s hand and squeezing softly, knowing the impact her next words would have. “You were married to her, Clara.”

“Oh,” the younger woman exhaled, tears burning at her eyes as she fought to remember, the guilt threatening to overwhelm her as she realised that she had forgotten someone so fundamentally part of her life. “How could I have forgotten River?” 

“It’s not your fault,” Kate assured her gently, patting her hand. “Whatever they did to you, it was strong. You’ll remember soon enough, though. Don’t worry about that. You’re doing great already.”

“I feel like…” she was unsure how to phrase her concerns. “I feel like there’s something else, I just…” 

“Don’t push it,” Kate soothed. “It’ll come back to you soon enough. Pushing for the memories is just going to slow the process down. We don’t want to try to walk before we can run.” 

“It’s not…” Clara closed her eyes stubbornly, trying to recall any small clue, and pain shot through her brain at once. “ _Ow._ OK, fine, you win. No remembering. But I have questions, so you’re going to answer them.” 

“Fine by me,” Kate concurred, grateful for the change in topic. “Shoot.” 

“Why the hell didn’t my gran phone me up and ask me why I’d turned up in London minus a husband and a wife?” 

“We…” Kate looked furtive. “We put a block on all your communication channels. Made sure no one from your family could get through to you until we were completely sure that them mentioning the Doctor to you wouldn’t cause a full meltdown.” 

“Do you mean,” Clara said carefully, feeling anger beginning to burn in her stomach. “That you’ve been keeping me away from my family on purpose?” 

“Yeah,” Kate clarified, looking guilty. “But it was really for your own good. I mean, we didn’t want you to go home, them to ask after the husband, and you to collapse and start bleeding out your ears or something.” 

“What if I’d started bleeding out my ears when _you_ started fucking with my memories?” 

“We grew increasingly certain that you wouldn’t. Placing the coat at Coal Hill was stage one of testing. When you didn’t respond negatively to that, we stepped up the levels of memory recall tactics. The journal was a nice idea, by the way.” 

“You…” Clara scowled at the invasion of privacy. “You read my journal?” 

“Of course. We needed to know what exactly you remembered, and whether the blue doors would work. I’ve seen a similar journal of impossible things, but yours was much more… interesting.” 

“Define _interesting._ ” 

“Romantic,” Kate confessed with a small shrug, determinedly not looking at Clara. “You write of him with such love.”

“Well…” Clara grasped for the right words. “I love him. _And_ River. So why didn’t I remember her? Why the hell was that not _there_?”

“It’s likely that the longer duration of your time with the Doctor meant that you were more likely to remember him first,” Kate explained. “He was a part of your life for longer, and tied to more events here on earth. River was less linked to your daily life here, so you were less likely to recall as much because there were fewer triggers to induce recollection.” 

“Oh,” Clara nodded slightly. “Right. OK. So you’re telling me that basically you stopped all my family contacting me in case I… forgot myself to death, then you pulled a stunt that could have had the same impact, and we still don’t actually know what the hell happened to make me forget?”

“Basically.” 

“Right,” Clara rolled her eyes. “So the question is, why did you decide to get involved _now_? I’d have happily wandered around my boring daily routine for another few years if you hadn’t intervened. I mean, it would have sucked, and I’d have thought I was mad, but I would’ve carried on with my boring little human life. So why did you get involved? Please for the love of fuck do not say anything really clichéd about wanting to reunite me with the Doctor for the sake of true love, because I will either cry or punch you or both, and I don’t want to find out which.”

“Well,” Kate cleared her throat slightly. “I mean, aside from the fact that we _do_ want to fix the true love thing, we kind of have… a problem.”

“Kate,” Clara groaned, rolling her head back to rest on the headboard. “How _big_ a problem?” 

“I mean,” Kate met her gaze and told her as coolly as she was able: “There’s a Zygon rebellion happening, and we need him to stop it.” 

“Does this have _anything_ to do with love at all?” 

“Yes!” Kate said defensively, frowning as she realised she had yet more bad news to break. “But I mean, we’ve got to assume that…” 

“Assume that what?” 

“Clara, he didn’t come for you,” Kate said quietly, her tone becoming abruptly more sombre. “He didn’t turn up on your doorstep two minutes after you arrived back in London. Does that really sound like the Doctor you know?” 

“What are you saying?” Clara asked, shaking her head as she began to understand Kate’s point, yet willing it to be that she had only misunderstood. “What… no.” 

“Clara, he doesn’t remember you,” the older woman stated, taking Clara’s hand in her own and squeezing. “We can’t escape that fact. He doesn’t remember, or he’d have turned up here months ago, angry as hell and determined to hurt whoever did this to you.” 

“No,” Clara said at once, the thought of the Doctor not remembering her enough to make her heart clench painfully and her breathing falter. “He wouldn’t forget me, you’re wrong – he’s clever, he’s probably just… lulling the bad guys into a false sense of security. Biding his time. Yep, that’s what he’s doing. He’s biding his time and then he’ll be here any minute to save me. Him and River, the dynamic… the dynamic…” 

“He has never bided his time with you,” Kate said softly, hating herself for having to make Clara understand. “He wouldn’t stand for this. Neither of them would. His temper and his hearts would not allow it.”

“No,” Clara reiterated, still shaking her head. “He wouldn’t… he couldn’t… neither of them would…” 

“I’m sorry,” Kate replied, gently pulling Clara into her arms and letting her weep. “I’m so sorry. We need them both back here, we need them to help, OK? Then we can fix this.” 

“But if… if they made _him_ forget…” Clara gulped for air and dragged a hand across her eyes, embarrassed. “If they made him forget then god knows won’t it kill him to remember? It almost killed me, and I’m just a human…” 

“Hey,” Kate chastised. “You’re not _just_ a human. We monitored you, so we can monitor him. We can make sure he remembers you _safely._ We can monitor him, and we can monitor River, and we can make sure nothing bad happens. I promise you that.” 

“But…” 

“Clara, we are _not_ going to let anything bad happen to him.” 

“You’re just saying that because he’s your prize asset,” she muttered bitterly, her sadness crystallising into irrational anger. “Aren’t you?” 

“No!” Kate sighed. “OK, we value him, yes, but we’re also surprisingly decent people. Sometimes. Just don’t ask me about… never mind. We want to help him, and River, and you. Please can you just let us maybe borrow him to save the world first?” 

“I guess,” Clara conceded. “But how the hell am I meant to help you find him? Or get him here? I don’t have the TARDIS with me, I can’t just phone him up or he’ll think I’m a prank caller, and if he doesn’t even remember who I am then it’s not like… not like…”

“Oh Clara,” Kate said, hugging the younger woman again. “It’s OK. We think we’ve kind of worked out a rough idea. He might not remember you – sorry, sorry, sorry, I know, I know, I’ll stop saying it now – but the TARDIS will. The TARDIS can get a message from you onto the psychic paper.” 

“How the hell do I know he’ll respond? It’s not like I’m his wife any more or anything. It’s not like he’s going to know who the fuck Clara Oswald is when she sends him a message asking him for help. He’ll just think I’m some random little human he met once in the course of saving some godforsaken planet.” 

“Clara,” Kate said patiently. “We’re going to use the code-words that UNIT agreed with him last time. OK? So he’ll come, and he’ll deal with the issue, and then we can help you guys sort things out. I promise you that.” 

“Please…” Clara whispered, uncertainty clouding her face. “Please let him be OK.” 

“We will do everything in our power,” Kate assured her, meeting her gaze. “I swear to you.” 

Clara nodded, finally certain that UNIT would not let herself, the Doctor or River down. “Fine,” she said, sighing deeply. “So how do I do this? Just… I don’t know, clap my hands if I believe in the TARDIS?” 

“Think about the TARDIS,” Kate instructed, repeating the instructions that Osgood had hypothesised after hours of painstaking work. “Keep her in your mind’s eye: what she represents to you, what she is for you. Call out to her. Just call. Let your heart miss her and let it hurt.” 

“And then?”

“Two words. _Nightmare Scenario._ ” 

“ _This_ is a bloody nightmare scenario…” Clara grumbled under her breath, but she closed her eyes anyway, allowing her newly regained memories to wash over her, allowing the knowledge of the Doctor’s forgetting to strike her to the core. Memories of the TARDIS washed over her: spinning around the console; arguing; kissing; laughing; and something else she didn’t fully recollect – she allowed it all to build up in her chest and then she did as Kate had instructed: she allowed her heart to reach out.

 

* * *

 

Deep in a sewer on Voltron-17, the Doctor fished the psychic paper from a jacket pocket and looked down at it in consternation. 

Written across it in a hand he faintly recognised were five words.

_Nightmare scenario. I need you._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Clara's message to the Doctor, he returns to London to assist UNIT - but with no recollection of his companion. Kate strives to keep the two apart to minimise potential damage to his memory, but will she succeed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry this is a day late - yesterday was incredibly busy for me, and I didn't have time to upload anything. So here it is! 
> 
> Thank you for all the wonderful comments so far!

Clara sat in Kate’s office, a mug of cold tea clutched in one had as she watched the CCTV feed from the Black Archive play out on a monitor in front of her. Files were spread loosely over the desk she was sat at, punctuated with occasional Post-Its covered in a familiar looping scrawl, but for now her attention was held by the screen, as she watched the Doctor stride confidently around the Archive, waving his arms with gusto as he orated on the subject of war to a captive – but reluctant – audience. 

Stood before him, at opposite ends of the table, were two figures, each with their hands poised over the boxes in front of them. One was Kate, and the other Clara recognised from her time perusing the TARDIS archives: tall, leggy and flamingly auburn, Amy Pond was currently piquing her jealousy in a moderately spectacular fashion… or at least, the Zygon that had duplicated her was. Clara scowled despite herself, her sense of possessiveness triggered by the beautiful woman’s proximity to the Doctor. She had known – in the early days, the days of Bow-Tie and gangly hugs – that she had been competing with a ghost for his affections. She just hadn’t anticipated the ghost being quite so ravishingly good-looking in the flesh. In the Zygon. Whatever. 

The TARDIS had materialised outside UNIT two days earlier, the Doctor scowling darkly as Kate embraced him and invited him inside with a practiced professional manner. Clara had watched the entire affair unfold from deep within the building’s security centre, only relocating to Kate’s office once it had been determined that the Doctor’s attention span had waned, and he had stridden out of the Tower in search of Zygons and splinter groups. Since then, she had been reading through the files attentively, trying to be of some assistance to UNIT instead of merely lurking around the building in the quiet hope that she might bump into the Time Lord by the water cooler.

Instead she had watched as the Time Lord was confronted with Amy Pond, all five foot eleven of her, and he had laughed in her face, praised the Zygon for its gall, and then proceeded to lose his rag with her in a way that made Clara wince and thank her lucky stars she was behind a computer screen. Her careful lessons on manners had clearly been deleted alongside the memories of her, she noted bitterly, although she wondered idly whether he still had his cue cards. The opportunity to get Kate to ask him had not arisen. 

She had watched him stride determinedly into the Black Archive alongside Bonnie – such a Scottish name, so fitting as the two faced each other down – and cast an unconcerned eye over the board that bore Clara’s photo, his indifference wounding her far more than his lapses in temper or his poor manners. While she had not expected him to remember her, she had half-hoped that her photograph would stir recognition in him, or trigger at least a moment of contemplation, but instead he had turned back to Bonnie and faced her down with a look of fury, his anger white hot as he blazed bright with the passion of his message of pacifism. While his words were crude and at times ineloquent, Clara felt a surge of love as she watched him work the floor, his natural charisma winning through the prickly façade as he fought to make both parties understand what he sought to convey, attempting to win them round to his worldview, and indeed Kate’s look was softening under the force of his words. Clara smiled fractionally as she watched him, forgetting for a moment their predicament, and it was not until Bonnie’s face crumpled in surrender and he reminded her gently of his knowledge of Amy Pond that Clara remembered the situation at hand, remembered that his capacity for love remained devoted to Amy, and that he would have little understanding of his gangly new body or gruff new manner without her there to have facilitated his transition from youthful to mature. 

She stopped for a moment to consider what he would recall and what he would be missing, taking a swig of her cold tea and shuddering as she did so. He would have a broken heart still, that much was certain – he had been a broken man when she had first met him, and she had tried to help him soothe that, tried to allay his pain after losing Amy. But now he would have a broken heart and no idea of how to mend it, coupled with no idea of how to smile – that much she had seen for herself as he faced down Bonnie and worked with UNIT. He would have no idea of how he came to be older, or Scottish – in fact, no idea of how he came to have another regeneration cycle, instead left wondering only at his apparently impossible odds – and he would not remember her contributions to enriching his life, or bringing laughter and love back to his TARDIS. He did not recall so much as her face, let alone ever loving her. That much she knew, that much twisted at her heart as she watched him, and whilst she attempted to console herself in the knowledge that soon things would be different and things could be changed, it was still enough to hurt her that he had not so much as recognised her face. 

“Doctor,” Kate said quietly from onscreen, and Clara looked up as Bonnie was led away by two UNIT soldiers, cowed into submission by the weight of the Doctor’s life experiences being laid across her shoulders. “We should go and…” 

“What? Chit chat and drink tea? I’m busy,” he snapped, turning his face away from both the camera and from Kate. “I was in the middle of something when you interrupted, I need to get back to it. It’s really quite essential.”

“What?” Kate asked, frowning slightly, and Clara’s expression mirrored the Chief Scientific Officer’s as she wondered what could be so important to the Doctor that he would consider leaving Earth without so much as a proper goodbye to UNIT. “What were you doing?”

“Well, I _was_ trying to save a planet when I got your message. But I do have bigger plans. The planet thing was mostly a side trip.” 

“Are you deliberately being coy, or are you just plain rude now? Because frankly, coy would be preferable to you being a gigantic Scottish bastard.” 

He sighed deeply. “Kate…” he began, sinking into a chair she dimly recognised his former self as once occupying. “Tell me… do you remember someone called Clara? She travelled with me, I believe.”

Clara felt her skin grow suddenly hot as she watched him look up, pain etched onto his features, and she fought back tears as she awaited Kate’s response. “I… I do,” Kate stammered, uncertain how much to reveal. “Why do you ask?” 

“I lost her,” he explained with a small shrug, although Clara could see that he was more bothered by the situation than he was letting on. “And I mean that… I mean that in the literal sense. I can’t remember her, and I don’t know where she’s gone. But when something goes missing, you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara. I know we travelled together. But I have no idea what she looked like. Or how she talked. Or laughed. There's nothing there. Just nothing.” 

“Are you looking for her?” Kate probed, crouching beside him and smiling encouragingly.

“I’m trying,” 

“She could be anyone, right? You don’t know who you’re looking for. I mean, she could be upstairs, for all you know.” 

The Doctor scoffed as Clara felt her heart clench, understanding what Kate was insinuating and understanding her plan. “Yeah, right. I’d best… I should go. I’ve got a Clara to find, and all." 

“Look, you miserable old sod,” Kate said fiercely, rising to her feet and adopting a stern expression. “You can’t just show up and save the world and then mope off again. I won’t have it. You’ll bloody well come upstairs and have a cup of tea before you leave. If you ask nicely, I might even be able to help on the Clara front. But only if you’re nice.” 

“Fine,” he muttered, hanging his head slightly, and Clara rose from the desk, backing away from it and smoothing her hair down, trying to mentally steel herself and wondering – perhaps somewhat redundantly – whether she looked presentable. “I’ll come. Might even be nice.” 

Stumbling in the general direction of the bathroom, determined to battle her hair and makeup into some degree of presentability and her mind engrossed by the thought that she would be seeing the Doctor again in a matter of moments, it was not until she had collided with a figure coming the other way that her mind returned to the present, her face flushing red with embarrassment. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled at once, feeling hands gripping her carefully just above the elbows, frozen in the act of brushing past her. “My…” 

“Do I know you?” asked a Scottish voice, and her head snapped up at once, meeting the Doctor’s gaze and seeing her own shock mirrored back at her. “I… you seem… familiar.” 

“Doctor,” she said, the word slipping out unbidden, and he frowned, blinking rapidly as Kate cursed behind him. “Shit, Kate…”

“My… I… do…” the Doctor stammered, pressing one hand to his head and closing his eyes in a gesture Clara recognised from her own moment of painful recollection. “Clara?” 

His knees gave way and he hit the floor before either woman could react, his eyes fluttering shut, Clara crouching beside him and shaking him urgently. “No, no, no,” she whispered, tears choking her words as she begged his unconscious form. “Come on, be OK, please be OK…” 

“I’ll get Osgood,” Kate stated, disappearing along the corridor at a run and yelling over her shoulder: “Be right back!” 

Clara took the Doctor’s hand and squeezed gently, running her thumb over his and silently offering a prayer to a god she wasn’t sure she believed in. “Wake up. Please. Wake up, please, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to… we didn’t mean to do it like this, it was meant to be controlled… I’m an idiot, I’m sorry…” 

His eyes fluttered open after a long moment of stillness and met with hers, his face breaking into a smile as he took in the sight of her face for the first time in many months. “Hello stranger,” he said a touch breathlessly, holding out his free arm to her awkwardly. “Long time, no see.” 

She flung herself into his embrace, sobbing with relief, burrowing into the soft velvet jacket she had missed so acutely and clinging to him with all her might, determined not to let him go again. 

“No fair,” she mumbled into his chest, kissing his sternum and feeling both his hearts race under her lips. “I passed out for way longer.” 

“Superior Time Lord physiology,” he hummed into her hair, sitting up and drawing her onto his lap, refusing to relinquish his hold on her. “Of course.” 

“You’re an idiot,” she retorted, cuddling into him and smiling fondly, laughing a little breathlessly with relief. “My big daft space idiot.” 

“How’d they fix you?” he asked after a short pause, pressing his lips to her temple before continuing. “I mean, assuming they… you didn’t call, so I assume they got to you too. Whoever _they_ are.” 

“They did,” she confirmed, feeling the same small shock of fear she always felt when contemplating their unknown attackers. “Urm, UNIT sort of… intervened. Painted some doors TARDIS blue, hijacked The Sun’s front page, left me my engagement ring. That kind of subtle thing.” 

“How did they…” he asked, looking down at the ring on her finger and examining it cursively, turning it to allow it to catch the light. “That’s a replica.” 

“Yes,” she concurred softly, long past caring that it was not the original. “But it’s good enough for me. So no complaining.” 

“Don’t suppose they’ve got mine. Or the three I had made…?” 

“Nope,” she admitted, feeling irrationally guilty. “Afraid not. River… wait, where _is_ River? Why isn’t she with you?” 

He shrugged, trying to downplay his own sadness. “I don’t know,” he confessed, hating having to say the words. “I remember being with you in the TARDIS, and the phone ringing and then… the next thing I knew: Mars.” 

“What’s so great about Mars?” 

“No idea. The randomiser had been set, so someone knew what they were doing in that respect, but they’d wiped everything else from the TARDIS data banks. No coordinates, no camera footage, nothing. It’s like whatever happened… didn’t happen. They were very, very thorough. Professionals, I’d say.” 

“But who could have known what to do? It’s a TARDIS, not an old banger. I mean… there’s Missy…?” 

“This isn’t her thing. Separating us isn’t chaotic enough for her liking,” he paused for a moment, ruminating on the problem for the millionth time. “It’s concerning, though.”

Kate appeared at the end of the corridor with Osgood by her side, jogging towards them and beaming in relief as she saw the Doctor had regained consciousness. 

“I told Kate I didn’t think it was Missy,” Clara told him in a low voice. “But are there… I mean, someone with that much knowledge has to be a Time Lord, surely? Or very, very clever?” 

“Or both,” he said grimly, looking up at Osgood with a considerably gentler look than he had sported for the past few days. “Hello, sciencey one.” 

“Hello,” she said with a reciprocal grin, visually checking him over with a practiced eye. “How’s the brain functioning?” 

“Oh, almost optimum,” he informed her with a small chuckle, wrapping his arms more securely around Clara. “Being back with my favourite small human is helpful in that respect.”

“It’s good that you’ve remembered,” Osgood enthused, before her expression became more sombre. “Because we’ve got a problem with Clara.” 

“We do?” both he and Clara asked simultaneously, panic filling both of them in synchronicity. 

“We do,” she confirmed, looking to Kate before continuing in a serious tone. “Regarding Emma.”

“Oh!” he said brightly, smiling down at his wife as his thoughts turned to their daughter. “Where is she? Back at yours, I presume?” 

“Emma?” Clara asked in bafflement, frowning up at him with a lack of understanding. “Who’s Emma?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is forced to help Clara remember their daughter - but how will she feel once she does? And where exactly _is_ their little girl?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, I remembered to upload this on the right day this week! This is a slightly shorter chapter, but it's important - next week's is longer, I promise!

The pain on the Doctor’s face in the wake of her words was tangible. She watched both of his hearts break in unison, the agony in his eyes almost enough to compel her to look away – and yet she did not understand why he was looking at her like that, or why he seemed so shocked by her ignorance. Emma was no more than a name to her – an abstract concept, not attached to any quantifiable person or thing – and she could not begin to comprehend who the name could belong to in order to provoke him into looking her like that. She shuffled slightly under the intensity of his gaze, looking down to the floor to avoid having to feel the force of his suffering, yet still she could feel his eyes on her. She dragged her eyes back up to his unwillingly, feeling his pain become _their_ pain, sharing the burden between them despite her lack of comprehension. 

“You…” he began, his words choked with tears as he looked down at her, one of his hands reaching to cup her cheek as he spoke. “You don’t…”

“Whatever’s happened, Doctor,” Kate interjected gently, looking between the two of them. “They’ve done a very thorough job. She remembered you first, and then River later on. It’s likely that whatever they’ve done is perhaps based on length of exposure to that person, or-” 

“No,” he growled, his thumb sweeping over the arch of Clara’s cheek before he pulled away and clenched his fists. “Someone knew what they were doing. Someone wanted to play with her emotions, so they’ve done this to her on purpose. They know what will happen when she remembers, which means they understood the implications of making her forget, and wanted to make sure it was thorough. That means they _know._ ” 

“Know what?” Kate asked, her brow furrowed as she struggled to understand his words.

“What Emma is. What she will be.” He sighed, putting his face in his hands and groaning slightly before turning his attention back to Kate and asking in an accusatory tone: “Why didn’t you tell her?” 

“Look, I’m right _here,_ ” Clara said angrily, irritated at being passed over as though she were a child or an invalid. “Can you stop-” 

Kate ignored her, explaining: “when it became evident she didn’t remember, we quickly realised that exposing her to the information could be potentially catastrophic. She collapsed when she remembered you, and no offence Doctor, but that link wasn’t as strong as her and Emma. There wasn’t that biological link, or any of the urges attached to that. We feared what could happen, so we tried to simply protect her from coming to any further harm.” 

“What biological link?” Clara demanded, her curiosity piqued. “What the hell are you talking about? Who’s Emma?”

“Kate, can you leave us?” the Doctor requested, sadness still etched upon his face as he turned to his wife and took her hands in his, the warmth from his palms reassuring her only fractionally. “This is going to be… please.” 

“Of course,” she concurred at once, putting a consoling hand on his shoulder before ushering Osgood away from them, both women looking to Clara with a level of sympathy that she did not understand. “Don’t let her blame herself.” 

“I won’t,” he assured her, watching as she disappeared out of sight, and then he sank to the floor of the corridor, arranging his limbs into a roughly cross-legged position, indicating Clara should take a seat beside him. After a moment’s hesitation, she complied, leaning her head on his shoulder in search of physical reassurance. “Clara, how much of _us_ do you remember?” 

“Most of it,” she said at once, before pausing and then amending: “Almost everything.” 

“Do you remember Darillium?” 

“The Singing Towers? Yeah, of course. You took us there for Valentine’s Day. They were beautiful. Kind of weird, but beautiful.” 

“Do you remember what you asked me there?” he looked at her with wide, apprehensive eyes, already anticipating her answer and feeling a sense of dread. 

“I asked you something?” she frowned slightly as she tried to remember, finding herself coming up against a mental barrier. “What?” 

“Clara,” he took her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm, closing his eyes to avoid having to see the hurt in her eyes. “Oh, my Clara, I’m sorry. I am so sorry, because I know this is going to hurt you. But you must understand this is not your fault.” 

“What isn’t my fault?” panic was rising in her chest as she contemplated him. “What is it? What did I ask you?” she paused for a beat, assuming the worst-case scenario. “Oh my god, was I going to leave you?” 

“No!” he assured her immediately, needing to allay her worries. “No, nothing at all like that. I promise you, nothing along those lines.” 

“So what did I ask you?” 

He fell silent for a moment, casting his gaze to his lap. “Do you remember, when we visited Jack, that he had a baby with him?” 

“Yeah…” Clara chewed her lip, smiling slightly as she recalled holding the infant in her arms. “What about her?”

“Clara, on Darillium, you… you posited the notion that you would like to have a baby.” He looked over at her, surprised to find her grinning with relief. “What?” 

“Well, you said no, right? Because of the Time War. So really, this isn’t that bad. You had me worried! So let me guess… Emma was my conciliatory kitten? And you hated her, because you think small fluffy animals are pointless?”

“Clara…” he sighed deeply, wondering how best to explain it to her succinctly. “I said no _at first._ But things happened, and we… we decided to have a child. We began trying, and you got pregnant, and we were so happy.” 

“No,” Clara mumbled, closing her eyes as she felt realisation dawning. “No, no, no…” 

“You got very sick, and then you… there was a thing that happened, and then you got a lot better. You got stronger. So strong, in fact, that your potential longevity could match mine. You also…” he grinned a little then. “Got a little reckless. So reckless in fact that you stole my TARDIS and ran away with River for a day, and went into labour in a forest on an alien planet.”

“Doctor…” Clara felt herself beginning to hyperventilate, not wanting to hear what came next. “Doctor, please…” 

“We called our little girl Emma,” he continued sadly, squeezing his wife’s hand. “And oh, Clara… she’s brilliant. She’s clever, and she’s beautiful, and she’s brave. She’s just like you, and she makes us so happy. But I… I’m sorry, but whoever did this… they’ve most probably taken her.” 

“But why would they do that? If she’s just a baby?” 

The Doctor looked to her with sadness. “I know you still won’t remember. I _know_ what I need to do, and I know this will hurt you. I’m sorry. Clara I’m so, so sorry.”

“Why…” was all she managed before his hands were on her temples, and it felt like a dam was bursting in her mind as memories began to wash over her, lightning fast. 

 _A little girl, no older than two, with dark hair and hazel eyes, laughing as she raced around the console room on unsteady feet, tripping and falling into the Doctor’s arms with a squeal of joy as he swung her up onto his shoulders. The same little girl nuzzled into her chest as they read a story together, ensconced under a mural of a thousand stars with a blanket tucked around them both, a sense of serenity pervading her in that instant. The same little girl, but younger and smaller, holding onto her jumper as they stood in the doorway of the TARDIS and looked out at a nebula, their child giggling and babbling enthusiastically as she was confronted with the majesty of the universe from the safety of her mother’s arms. But then…_

_The Doctor, sombre as he spoke the words: “the hybrid is said to be a combination of two warrior races, and they will be a greater warrior than the sum of their parts, thus one day, they will stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. They will unravel the web of time, and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal their own.”_

She looked up at him, feeling a hot rush of guilt that choked her words as she realised the depth and breadth of what she had forgotten – of _who_ she had forgotten. “I forgot her,” she managed after a moment, her voice small. “I forgot our daughter. What kind of parent forgets their own daughter? Jesus. _Jesus._ How could I…” 

“Clara,” the Doctor said gently, tilting her chin up to look her in the eyes. “You were _made_ to forget. This is not your fault.” 

“But I remembered you, and I remembered River!” she protested, beginning to cry. “Why couldn’t I remember her? She’s our daughter, she’s our daughter and I couldn’t even… oh god…”

“Hey,” he soothed, wrapping his arms around her and letting her weep. “This is not your fault, Clara. Whoever wiped your memories made sure that should there be any glitches and you remembered me, you did not remember her. It was probably a conscious choice to provoke me into reacting, and you were the victim in this. You are not to blame here.” 

“Oh,” she mumbled, attempting a stab at humour: “How would this be provocative? I don’t exactly look my best.” 

“Not that kind of provocation, Clara… more because watching my wife sobbing because some _bastards_ made her forget our daughter is not something I will forgive them for,” he growled, his expression hardening. “And because they’ve got her.” 

“Who the hell is _they,_ though?” 

He shrugged, unwilling to admit his lack of knowledge. “I don’t know. They’re packing serious tech if they can do this though. At a guess, I’d say this was akin to a… a… _oh._ ” 

“What? Oh what?” 

He whipped the sonic out of his pocket and scanned her, frowning at the results. “Well, we haven’t been retconned. Much too long term. And the memories haven’t been deleted if we can reactivate them. So at a guess, I’d say we’ve been… reprogrammed. Like bio-hacking. Nothing earth-bound, at least not for another few centuries.” 

“And so whichever alien did that has Emma? Because of this… prophecy?” 

“It’s probable. They’ll see her as a weapon.” 

“No,” Clara whispered, quietly defiant of the notion. “She’s not a weapon. She can’t ever be a weapon. She’s just a little girl… what, are they going to make her hold a gun? They can’t do that, can they? They can’t make her do that, we didn’t raise her like that…”

“They did it to River,” he said grimly. “My own bespoke psychopath.” 

“They…” Clara began to cry anew as she realised the potential link between River and Emma. “No, they can’t… they can’t take her from us and do that, they can’t… oh my god, what if we never see her again? Or what if it’s like River? We miss everything, all the milestones, all the teenage years, everything… I…” she whimpered, burrowing her face into his shirt as she spoke. “I can’t face that, Doctor, I won’t face that.”

“Clara,” he said as gently as possible, stroking her back as he tried to remain positive. “Best-case scenario if the worst has happened and that’s come to pass is that at least we would still _have_ a daughter then. She’d be a grown up, but she’d be alive. We’d have missed memorable events, but she would be back with us. You have to focus on that. You have to focus on the positives.” 

“What positives?” she snapped, his words having failed to allay her fears. “Someone has taken my daughter away from me and is probably either executing her or turning her into a weapon. River is still missing. _What fucking positives_?” 

The Doctor squeezed her hand. “We’ve got each other,” he reminded her patiently. “And we are going to find Emma and River. I can promise you that much, OK? I will not rest until we find them. That I can assure you of.” 

“But how the hell do we even begin?” Clara asked, wiping her eyes and feeling a profound sense of helplessness. “I can’t remember anything beyond-” 

“Being in the TARDIS and the phone ringing. No, me neither.” 

“But I mean… the TARDIS could help, right? Big, clever old Gallifreyan time machine?” 

“She’s been cleared of data, Clara, I doubt it,” he sighed heavily. “Although… well, there’s always the… oh, I am an idiot! Doctor Idiot!”

“What?” Clara asked, unable to resist adding: “I mean, you are, but what?” 

“You remember when Emma pushed all those buttons and deleted my old companion files? Well, I installed a backup system. Like an external hard drive for the TARDIS – just in case Emma got button-happy again. It’s still in there somewhere in a back room, I completely forgot about it… it’ll have coordinates on. Everything.”

“So why are we still here?” Clara asked, getting up and pulling the Doctor to his feet, already taking off at a run. “We’ve got our family to find.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor's turns to the TARDIS backup system for answers - but what will he and Clara discover about their daughter's fate?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter this week to make up for last week's short update!

Clara was sat in a dingy back room of the TARDIS, a mug of tea beside her as she watched the Doctor work on his backup system. There was not, she had to admit, much to watch, other than the soles of his boots as he grovelled around underneath what resembled nothing more than a car-sized cube of oily metal. 

“I’m not being critical,” she chanced. “But I used to have a backup system for my laptop. Three terabytes, and it was no bigger than my phone. Why is this so huge?” 

Although she couldn’t see him, she knew the expression on his face would be the condescending kind she loved to hate. “Because,” he said patiently, his voice slightly muffled from underneath the drive. “The TARDIS generates a lot more information _per second_ than your laptop generates per week. And it’s all much more important than naughty video preferences or marking spreadsheets.” 

Clara smirked. “I don’t know, my porn preferences were pretty important,” she teased, poking the sole of his boot with her toe and being rewarded with a yelp of surprise and a loud clang. “All _older men._ ” 

“Can you not flirt with me while I’m trying to retrieve data pertinent to you know, saving our family?” 

“Why?” she asked innocently, grinning even though he couldn’t see her. “Just trying to keep your spirits up.” 

“Yes,” he concurred, and she knew he would be rolling his eyes. “But I just headbutted something and accidentally deleted a backup of my workshop. Including the clockwork squirrel.” 

“How awful,” Clara said drily, remembering the squirrel with little fondness. “How truly terrible for you.”

“I loved him,” he argued. “And Emma loved him. Now stop flirting with me or I might headbutt something else and lose the sodding coordinates.”

“ _Boring,_ ” she whined, risking a sip of over-sugary tea and then grimacing. “It’s not my fault you can’t multitask. All that superior Time Lord physiology and you’re still confined to the same limitations as human men.” 

“It’s not my fault that you’re very attractive and very distracting and I haven’t seen you in months, months during which the only things that tried to flirt with me were the TARDIS and something with tentacles.” 

“That seems a bit… tentacle-ist,” Clara quipped, raising an eyebrow. “Hang on, if the TARDIS is sentient and creepily records everything, does that mean our sex tapes are on this hard drive? You’re not just watching them, are you? Which _bit_ of you keeps clanging against it?”

“You’re incorrigible,” he said with exasperation. “Our daughter is _missing…_ ” 

“And I haven’t had anyone to flirt with in months. Also if I stop flirting with you I might actually cry, and then you’ll get all worried and we certainly won’t get any coordinates because you’ll be _fussing,_ so honestly? This is a good alternative, I feel.” 

“Good point, well made,” he admitted, then whooped in triumph. “Coordinates found and retrieved. Sending them back to the main console as we speak.”

“You genius. Extract yourself then, you nutter,” she said firmly, ignoring the swooping feeling of apprehension in her stomach, and instead laughing as he emerged, hair askew and face daubed with oil. “Seriously, why is there oil? It’s not very… technical for a Time Lord.” 

“It’s not oil,” he informed her haughtily. “It’s a supercharged nano-transmitter gel that helps to facilitate the transfer of data.” 

“Whatever,” she chucked a towel in his general direction, rolling her eyes. “Smarten up and meet me back in the console room. Got it?”

She stalked from the room before he could argue, following the corridors until she was stood before the monitor in the console room, perplexed to find that the coordinates displayed there were from London, several months previously. She frowned minutely as she amended the time to today’s date, unwilling as she was to witness whatever had occurred there on that fateful day, and then disengaged the handbrake before her nerves or reason could overwhelm her. 

“Nice flying,” the Doctor said gently from behind her, now considerably less dishevelled, and she smiled at the compliment. “Are you ready for this?”

“No,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around him as they landed, resting her chin against his chest as she looked up at him. “I don’t… what if it’s something awful?” 

“It will be awful,” he reminded her frankly. “Because it’s Emma, and because the truth is always painful. But it will be better to know than not know. Why did you pick today’s date, by the way?” 

“I don’t want to… we can’t… meet ourselves,” she lied weakly, knowing that it was a poor attempt but hoping he understood. “It’s bad to cross our own timelines.” 

He sighed deeply, meeting her gaze with sadness. “I know. And I know you’re scared to see what happened, you don’t need to lie to me about that. I’m terrified too. Whether or not we see _that_ day in person, we’ll have to remember it… and it’ll hurt. But we need to know what happened so we can know where to begin. So we can find her.” 

“I know,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears that burned there. “Whatever happens – happened – will happen, god only knows the tenses… please know I love you. So very much.” 

“And I you,” he assured her, before taking her hand and leading her to the doors apprehensively. “Ready?” 

“No.” 

“Me neither,” he confessed, before stepping outside and onto the ruins of a historic street, the cobbles littered with wreckage. “What…” 

They looked around in consternation, realising the destruction was recent. Window panes were smashed, doors ripped off their hinges, market carts overturned, and strewn amongst the debris were artefacts that were distinctly alien, even to the untrained eye.

“They all left in a hurry,” the Doctor murmured, crouching and picking up what she recognised as a Cyberman hand. “Whoever _they_ were. An alien street in London. How did I not… this is fascinating. They managed to hide this from me for years, must have done, or I’d have dropped in for a cuppa by now. Not sure about Cybermen as drinking buddies though, although there’s evidence here of Ood too. Lovely chaps, Oods.” 

“If it’s alien,” Clara asked, her voice shaky, raising one hand to point to a worn, gilded cage at the far end on the street, in which there lay a single black feather. “What the hell was a bird doing here?” 

The Doctor turned his gaze to Clara, and then in unison, they felt the world go dark.

_“So, it’s like Diagon Alley?” Emma asked, swinging on her mother’s hand as they stepped into the warm lamplit glow of the street. “This is basically Diagon Alley, right? But with aliens instead of wizards?”_

_Clara laughed, picking the little girl up and settling her on her hip. “I guess, love, yeah,” she agreed, smiling as she teased: “Wonder if we can find you a broomstick.”_

_“Mummy!” the little girl giggled. “Aliens don’t have broomsticks; they have Mach-5 Fusion-Powered Hoverboards with Integrated Safety Matrixes.”_

_From behind them, River groaned. “Doctor, I told you not to get her that bloody catalogue. She’s been hankering after a hoverboard for weeks.”_

_“Emma, you’re not having one,” Clara told her daughter for the thousandth time. “I’ve told you that.”_

_“Can’t daddy make me one?” the little girl countered, looking up at her mother with a familiar wide-eyed look. “Please?”_

_“I’ve already told you yes…” the Time Lord reaffirmed, disentangling himself from a passer-by’s tentacles. “But I’ll make you one.”_

_“I would honestly rather buy her one than you build her one,” Clara said grimly, pulling a face. “At least a shop one would have safety features.”_

_“Safety features are boring,” the Doctor scoffed, rolling his eyes at his wife’s reticence. “They’re rubbish.”_

_“See, you said that about the kitchen,” River reminded him. “And then Emma stuck her hand in the toaster because it told her to, and you had to do double CPR, and nearly needed it yourself after panicking for two hours. Remember?”_

_“Shut up,” he groused, scuffing his boots over the cobbles sulkily. “She’s fine, isn’t she?”_

_“Daddy, I’m just fine. And I won’t fall off. I’d be brilliant at flying. I’d be just like Harry Potter.”_

_River muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “you’d be bloody annoying.”_

_“What was that?” Clara called over her shoulder, winking at Emma, who giggled despite her earlier petulance._

_“Nothing, dear,” her wife said sweetly. “This argument is irrelevant anyway, because she’s not having a hoverboard.”_

_“I hate all three of you,” Emma said grumpily, burrowing into her mother’s shoulder as she used a distinctly teenaged tone. “_ Want _one.”_

_“’I want’ never gets,” Clara sang, mindful of her grandmother’s motto. “Besides. You shouldn’t have been reading Harry Potter yet. You’re too young.”_

_“I’m two!”_

_“Yes, and most human toddlers aren’t even reading yet, let alone consuming a stalwart of international children’s literature.”_

_“Human children are boring…” the Doctor muttered, earning himself a sharp look from both his wives._

_“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Clara countered. “Emma, let’s just have a nice day here, yeah? No more Harry Potter comparisons. I don’t think we’ll find an Ollivander’s or Gringotts.”_

_“Fine,” the little girl muttered, scrambling down from her mother’s arms to go and examine a nearby market stall. “Can I have some of these?”_

_“You’ll ruin your appetite,” Clara said as firmly as she could manage, immune to her daughter’s pleading. “Come on, stay close. Don’t want you wandering off-”_

_“Yeah, there might be a Knockturn Alley,” the little girl agreed, grinning at her mother’s exasperated expression. “OK mummy.”_

_Clara slipped her hand into the Doctor’s as they walked behind their daughter, watching her look around in wide-eyed fascination. “Are you going to slip off and investigate?” she murmured, and he shook his head._

_“Not yet. Let her have her fun a little longer, then I’ll go. Whoever it was, they can get a message to the psychic paper_ and _keep this place hidden for centuries, so they’ll be powerful. I want you and her back in the TARDIS before then. Just in case things get dangerous.”_

_Clara nodded in agreement. “Deal.”_

_“Mummy, look!” Emma called, pointing ahead of them to where a figure garbed all in black stood, the flow of citizens parting around him as he glowered through the crowds._

_Clara felt her heart clench, recognising the stance of police – human or otherwise – from years of experience with the Doctor. “Emma,” she said firmly, trying to keep her tone light. “Come here, love. Now.”_

_Ignoring her mother, Emma edged a little closer, the crowds parting as she reached the proximity of the figure. At once, his attention snapped to her, and he seized her by the wrist, eliciting a sharp cry of pain in response._

_“Emma!” the Doctor roared, racing forwards and snatching her back from the severe-looking alien holding her, Clara and River by his side at once, both of them clamouring over Emma. “How dare you? She’s just a child. You have no right to… Emma, are you alright?”_

_She nodded, burrowing into his jacket and closing her eyes, visibly shaken._

_“We dare for she is wanted internationally by our mistress.” The figure told them in a gravelly tone._

_“What?” Clara asked with incredulousness, instinctively stepping between him and the Doctor to shield Emma. “Who on earth… she’s just…”_

_“A hybrid. An illegally created human-alien hybrid, which contravenes the laws of peace which govern this planet.”_

_“What laws?” River asked, scowling deeply in thought. “We know UNIT, there are no such laws.”_

_“Perhaps not in your community, no. But ours holds these laws. Thus the hybrid must be destroyed.”_

_“Daddy,” Emma whimpered, balling her fists into his jacket. “Daddy, my neck hurts.”_

_The Doctor brushed her hair aside and felt his hearts stop. There on the back of her neck, dark against his daughter’s pale skin, were inscribed three digits. Zero-zero-five._

_“Doctor?” Clara asked, her voice worried as she looked down at the numbers. “Doctor, what is that?”_

_“It’s a chronolock,” he told her, his voice slightly strangled as memories flooded back to him. “It…”_

_“It binds a quantum shade to a target,” the enforcer said with a small shrug, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to a cage holding a raven at the end of the street. “Pretty, isn’t it? Humans do so love melodrama, so ours chose that form to reflect this world’s view of death.”_

_“Death?” Clara asked, panic rising in her tone as she looked between him, the Doctor and Emma. “Doctor, what does he mean, death?”_

_“A quantum shade… it… it…” he closed his eyes, shaking his head in denial of what he was having to explain. “A quantum shade is assigned to a person or thing, and it…”_

_“It kills them,” the enforcer finished bluntly, as though it were an easily digestible fact. “As simple as that.”_

_“And the chronolock?” Clara asked, snatching Emma from the Doctor and looking down at the numbers, which now read zero-zero-four. She clutched the little girl more tightly, feeling her daughter’s arms encircle her neck in search of comfort. “Oh my god, it’s counting down. Doctor. Why is it counting down? You’re a Time Lord, you’ve got to stop this._ Make this stop _.”_

_“I can’t,” he confessed, his words choked by guilt as he realised the reality of what was about to happen. “I can’t…”_

_“TARDIS,” Clara suggested desperately, clinging to Emma. “We can…”_

_“You cannot outrun a quantum shade,” the enforcer said with what was arguably a smirk. “It is not possible.”_

_“But… wait, but its master can call it off. You mentioned your mistress, take me to her,” the Doctor snarled, squaring up to the figure before him. “Now. Make her remove it.”_

_“No,” the alien said calmly, unfazed by the Doctor’s fury. “She has ordered this.”_

_“The execution of a child?” River asked with disgust. “Who are they?”_

_“Mummy,” Emma said suddenly, silencing the argument, looking up at her mother with wide, trusting eyes. “Mummy, I don’t want to die.”_

_“You won’t,” Clara said at once, needing to reassure them both. “I swear to you, I will stop this. Doctor, do something.”_

_“I can’t!” he told her again, feeling irrational guilt twist his stomach at the fact. “I can’t, oh god, I can’t…_ wait. _The chronolock is transferable.”_

_“So I’ll take it!” Clara insisted firmly, determined not to let her daughter die. “Let me take it. I’m a hybrid too.”_

_“You are not a_ grown _hybrid, thus your genetics are of little interest,” the enforcer told her. “The sentence may be transferred only by the accused, and only in the event of a lesser crime. She will be destroyed. There is nothing you can do.”_

_“You sick monster,” River snarled, fingers ghosting over where her gun used to hang on her hip. “You would kill a child for what? To protect yourselves?”_

_“To protect the universe.”_

_“Auntie River,” Emma pleaded, closing her eyes against the anger that surrounded her. “Please. Don’t. If I have to be destroyed, don’t be cross. Be happy now and angry after.”_

_Clara felt tears begin to spill down her cheeks as she looked down at her daughter, two years old and already willing to face death with more dignity than many adults who had enjoyed longer lifespans. “Emma…”_

_“Mummy,” the little girl said with seriousness. “If they say I am a bad thing, it’s not your fault. Don’t be sad. Please don’t be sad.” She beckoned her mother to lean down, and then whispered in her ear: “Make another me and don’t bring them here. Be like daddy and run and run and run.”_

_“But…”_

_“Mummy, I love you. Always. Please. Don’t be sad.”_

_“I love you, darling.” Clara whispered, passing the little girl to the Doctor and fighting back tears as he watched him whisper to their daughter, kissing her forehead as he murmured to her in Gallifreyan. This would be the last time she would see this. The last time she would watch him holding their daughter._

_“River,” he said after a moment, his voice measured as he passed her, before wrapping his arm around Clara’s waist, kissing her temple as he wiped his eyes on the cuff of his sleeve. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to his wife, needing her to know how apologetic he truly was, needing to alleviate his guilt. “I didn’t…”_

_“You couldn’t have known,” she assured him, squeezing his hand as River hugged Emma. “It’s not your fault.”_

_“Doctor, Clara,” River called weakly, tears spilling down her cheeks as she presented the damning fact: “She’s got one minute.”_

_Clara held out her arms, taking Emma into them and cradling her to her chest, determined to remember this moment, determined to enshrine her daughter in her memory for the rest of eternity. “You are brilliant,” she breathed. “And you are so very loved, and you will be missed every single second.”_

_“Put me down,” Emma implored. “Mummy…”_

_“I’m not letting you go alone,” Clara whispered, joking in desperation: “You’re not old enough for that yet.”_

_“But…”_

_“Not buts, Emma. We love you, darling. Oh god, we love you so very much.”_

_At the end of the street, the raven cawed, phasing through the bars of its cage and taking flight._

_“Let me be brave,” Emma told herself quietly, watching it approach. “Please, let me be brave.”_

_The raven met her chest and disappeared, Emma’s mouth opening in a final scream of agony that only caused Clara to clutch her tighter, openly weeping as she watched the light leave her daughter’s eyes, before her life billow from her mouth in a plume of black smoke._

_“No,” she mumbled, falling to her knees with the little girl clutched to her chest, curling around her lifeless body and howling with rage at the injustice of it all. “No, no, Emma, no…”_

_She fell silent in her grief, sobbing in silence as she fought to comprehend that her daughter was truly gone. An idle part of her wondered if she was still a mother in the wake of this, or whether her right to use the term had died with her daughter. She would never give up the moniker given a choice, she decided. They may have taken her daughter but they would not take this final thing from her._

_She was aware of the Doctor and River beside her, each of them reaching out to touch Emma – to stroke her hair, to hold her now-cooling hand – and seek solace in the physical presence of her, regardless of the absence of her spirit or her life force. In that moment, the three of them wept as one being, their hearts breaking in synchronicity as they attempted to imagine a future devoid of the little girl who brought them so much joy._

_“Doctor?” a familiar voice cut through their grief, and their heads snapped up to take in the woman who stood before them, her hair neatly rolled and her décolletage covered in in an intricate tattoo, a gold chain of office heavy around her neck._

_“You,” the Doctor snarled, getting to his feet and scowling down at her as he jabbed at her chest with his finger. “Me. Ashildr. Whatever the hell you’re calling yourself, go to hell. Literally. I would suggest you start running, because you will find that the universe becomes a very small place when I am angry with you.”_

_“I know that you are suffering, Doctor,” she ceded, her words measured and her expression unperturbed. “But our laws are stringent. Hybrids are not to be created.”_

_“What about me?” Clara asked defiantly, Ashildr’s indifference provoking her to a quiet rage. “I’m a hybrid.”_

_“You are not a_ grown _hybrid, thus you do not truly count,” Ashildr told her calmly. “You are quite safe here.”_

_“I don’t want to be safe, I want to be with my daughter,” Clara asserted, knowing in that instant that it was true, and that she would do whatever was necessary to be with Emma once more. “That and hopefully take you with me in the attempt.”_

_“I’m-”_

_“Immortal? I’m willing to test that. You took my daughter from me…”_

_“And for that I am truly sorry. I take no joy in killing children, rest assured of that. In fact, I am here to offer you a measure to alleviate some the burden of your suffering.”_

_“What kind of measure?” Clara asked, narrowing her eyes at the woman and fearing the worst._

_Ashildr held out three curved, dark silver devices, each the size of a mobile phone and engraved with concentric swirls. “By clicking this button, you are signing an electronic contract that will permit you to take your daughter’s body for burial or cremation at a site of your choosing.”_

_“Wait…” the Doctor scowled, turning to the enforcer with fury as he understood abruptly the literality of what they had been told. “You never told us we wouldn’t…”_

_“She is to be destroyed,” the enforcer told him. “That is the deal. Unless you-”_

_There was a click as Clara pressed the button on one of the devices, looking to the Doctor with an unwavering expression. He understood, even without her having to speak, and he reached for the second device without hesitation, taking her hand as he clicked the switch, looking to River expectantly._

_The memory darkened, dissolving away and leaving them surrounded by the remains of the street._

“Doctor…” Clara whispered, her cheeks wet with tears as she sat up and clutched his hand shakily. “Oh god, Doctor…" 

“That’s what wiped our memory,” he realised, pulling her close and cradling her against his chest, trying to come to terms with what they had witnessed. “And River… well, I assume we blacked out, so she must have done this and ran, after… well… after Emma…”

“She’s not dead,” Clara insisted, sure of this one fact. “Emma’s not dead, Doctor. I know that she isn’t. I would feel in my heart if she was dead.”

“Clara…”

“No, Doctor,” she shook her head. “Now, are you going to keep looking at me like I’m deluded, or are you going to help me track down River and get some answers?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After discovering what happened on Trap Street, Clara and the Doctor argue about the best course of action to take.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of today, I bring you... chapter six.

“Clara, we need to try to come to terms with…” the Doctor chanced as Clara strode back into the TARDIS, circling around the console and flicking switches determinedly. 

“No,” she reiterated, looking up to meet his gaze and then repeating: “No. I won’t. I refuse. She’s not dead.” 

“But…” 

“You’ve lost people,” Clara snapped, her temper fraying without warning. “ _You’ve_ lost people – _you_ damn well tell me whether it feels like a part of you has died. Go on.” 

“Clara…” he said gently, crossing the room to her and watching tears form in her eyes as he took her hand, pressing his lips to it with absolute tenderness. “Clara, it doesn’t. But you know what happened to us. You know what they did. It’s possible.” 

“ _Fuck possible,_ ” Clara snarled, yanking away from him. “Fuck everything. She isn’t dead. I will not even entertain the possibility that she might be. You can bloody well be pessimistic and tell yourself she is, but I will not be joining you in that thought. Got it?” 

“Got it,” he concurred gruffly, stepping away from her and fumbling with the screen to hide his face from the intensity of her glare. “I’m just saying-” 

“Oh for the love of fuck!” Clara all but shouted, flinging herself into the reading chair and arranging herself into a defensive position. “I watched her die, OK? I watched the light leave her eyes and her life leave her body as she _died in my arms_ , and all I can do is pray for some kind of miracle. I can pray for a miracle and pray that it was some kind of trick, or trap, because it’s that – it’s that, and there be some degree of hope – or I will go into the depths of this ship, find a suitable beam and hang myself from it. Do you understand that? Do you understand how much this hurts?” 

“Clara,” he began, looking away from the intensity of her anguish and swiping his eyes with his sleeve. “Of course I… how could you… yes, of course. But you can’t let that happen.” 

“Why the hell not?” she barbed, feeling a stab of guilt at her accusations and yet feeling her own grief burning through her intensely enough to silence any sense of conscience she may have felt. “My child might be dead. The child who saved my life, the child who brought us together as a family and brought me so much joy. She might be g-gone and it’s my f-fault, I should have p-protected her and I d-didn’t…” 

“Oh, my Clara,” he said softly, sinking to his haunches in front of her and taking her hands in his as she began to weep. “I know how much this hurts you and I’m sorry. But it’s not your fault. I answered that message, I took you there – I should have been more careful, Clara. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for this, I had a duty of care and I let you down.” 

“What’s the point?” she sobbed, clenching her fists under his palms. “What’s the point of anything now she’s gone?” 

“There’s a point,” he reminded her, feeling his hearts break as he watched her sorrow consume her. “There’s always a point. There’s me, and there’s River, and Emma is probably out there, Clara. You said so yourself.” 

“And if she’s not?” 

“If she’s not, then there’s me,” he said gently. “There’s always me. And I refuse to lose you. I refuse to let you give up on living. She wouldn’t want that. She would want you to enjoy your life and live it to the fullest, seeing the stars and doing an awful lot of running. She wouldn’t want you dead. Not ever.” 

“I’d be with her.” 

“For the love of god!” he felt his anger boil over, standing up and shoving his hands deep into his pockets to conceal his balled fists. “I almost lost you once, Clara, and goddamn it, it nearly killed me. I thought you were dead for all of five minutes but I was ready to do anything to see you again – and then I remembered I had River. I had people who needed me. The fact you would insult me by saying that you have nothing left if she’s gone is… Jesus, Clara! What do I mean to you? What do I mean to you, that you would say that and consider it OK? How dare you? Is that what I deserve?” 

“I…” 

“No,” he said furiously. “I don’t deserve that. Clara, how could you?”

“You don’t… you have no right to…" 

“What? Because I don’t understand? Like she wasn’t my daughter too, like I haven’t lost enough children? You call this a heartbreak? You wouldn’t have survived the things I’ve endured.”

“And you wouldn’t either if it hadn’t been for me!” she retorted, her eyes blazing. “This is a heartbreak, yes, because while to you she’s only a drop in the ocean, to me she was the world!” 

“A drop in the ocean?” he scoffed, his voice catching. “You think I barely cared for her because she was one of many? You think my love for her was rationed, was reduced, by my love of those who came before? How dare you accuse me of that? How dare you accuse me of not loving her with absolution. Yes, for me she was new. She was young and she was perfect, and I loved her with the entirety of my two hearts because she reminded me of the goodness in me and not the darkness I fought so hard to hide. You do not speak to me of meting out love, you do not speak to me of knowing of the depth of loss. You do not judge, and you do not desire to die.” 

“You do not dict-” 

“I’ve seen you, Clara,” he continued. “I’ve seen you in moments when you think I don’t. When Danny died. When your dad died. I’ve seen the darkness within you and I’ve watched it consume you from the inside out. I’ve watched the light in _your_ eyes die, Clara, and I’ve seen the life leave _you_ – because I’ve seen that darkness rob you of a desire to go on. I’ve watched parts of _you_ die, and I watched our daughter die, and I won’t stand for it any more. That darkness does not own you. That darkness holds no tangible control over you, Clara Oswald, because I forbid it to. I love you, and so help me, if that was enough to draw you back from the brink of oblivion before – after Danny, after your dad, after losing everything – then it will be enough now. You have saved me, Clara Oswald, more times than I could count, so now for the thousandth time: _let me save you._ ” 

“I…” she paused for a moment, weighing up her emotions and realising the hurt her words had inflicted upon him. “I’m sorry.” 

“I know.”

“I didn’t… I just…” she bowed her head, her cheeks still wet with tears. “I love her.”

“I know.” 

“I can’t lose her.” 

“We aren’t going to lose her,” he assured her softly. “I can promise you that.” 

“I love you. I’m sorry, that’s enough, of course that’s enough, I just… I spoke without thinking…” 

“You do that, yep,” he said gravely, only the twinkle in his eye betraying his jest, and she chuckled. “We’re going to find River, OK? And River being River, and thus very clever, she’ll send us straight to Emma right away. Just you wait and see.” 

“So how do we find her?” 

“Well, there’s quite a long list of places in the universe,” the Doctor mused, poking his tongue out at Clara to make her giggle. “We can cross some off straightaway as being too obvious. Stormcage, for one. They’d track her straight there, and she never much fancied the security of the place anyway.” 

“But did you have somewhere like… I don’t know, an emergency meeting place? An ‘oh shit everyone is trying to kill us, let’s split up and reconvene on Vulcan’ place?” 

“Vulcan’s not real, Clara,” the Doctor said patiently, and she rolled her eyes. “I mean. It is, but it’s completely different and actually quite… never mind. We did have a storm room, though. Well, storm-planet-type-thing. I just forget where. I’m sure I wrote it down somewhere.”

“You wrote down your secret secure storm room location?” Clara raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t seem very secure.” 

“Shut up, that’s not helping,” he scowled as he spoke, furrowing his brow and concentrating hard. “I think it’s…” 

“Hang on, I thought you were going to go and find where you’d written it.” 

The Doctor affixed her with a withering stare. “This is an infinite space ship, Clara. That would take years of my life. It’s much easier to try and recall the memory of writing it down.” 

“You’re weird.” 

“Shut up,” he said again, closing his eyes, and she obeyed, biting back a witticism. “Right. There we go: Oberon-15. It’s in the Horsehead Nebula.” 

“What’s so great about it?” 

“Literally nothing. It’s one of the most boring places in the universe. Miles of grey earth with the occasional wooden hut.” 

“Doesn’t sound very you.”

“That was the point,” he danced around the console, typing coordinates. “She knew the date, and she’d have got a vortex manipulator from somewhere – always knew where to get her hands on such things. So… all we need to do is…” he disengaged the handbrake, and there was a loud _bang_ from the console. “Hey!” 

“What just happened?” Clara asked, relieved to be well away from the control panel, which was now emitting sparks. 

“We just bounced _off_ Oberon-15.” 

“What do you mean we bounced off it?” Clara raised her eyebrows and chanced a joke: “It’s not a trampoline.” 

“It means there’s a whole lot of time disruption around the date we agreed. Which means either she’s done something clever, or extremely stupid.” 

“It’s River,” Clara observed drily. “Probably both.” 

“Very funny,” he snarked. “Hold onto something.”

“Why?” 

“Remember when we landed on Trenzalore?” 

“Dimly. Again, why?”

He grinned at Clara a touch manically as he disengaged the anti-gravs. “Geronimo.” 

Clara shrieked and grabbed onto the nearest railing, swearing almost as rapidly as they were descending, and when they finally connected with the ground in a resounding _crash_ she blew her hair off her face and glared at the Doctor. “I hate you,” she muttered, getting to her feet and pointedly dusting herself down. “You’d better not have cracked anything this time.” 

“You were cracked anyway.” 

“Not funny, arsehole,” she grinned anyway. “I meant the TARDIS. Don’t want her sulking and releasing that video of you singing Aerosmith in your pants to the space interweb, do we?” 

“Sorry old girl,” the Doctor said in a conciliatory manner, patting the console gently. “You knew that was necessary, right?”

The time machine beeped in a slightly affronted manner, and he sighed.

“Come on,” he mumbled to Clara, holding out his hand. “Let’s leave her to cool off a bit and go and see what we can find.” 

“Urm, Doctor?” Clara chanced, a thought nagging at her. “What if we’ve done a Wizard of Oz?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Well… you know. Splat.” She widened her eyes at him and watched a look of horror pass over his face as he understood. “Yeah.” 

“I’m sure River’s brighter than that,” he said with false optimism, and she nodded in agreement, trying to make herself believe it. “Come on. Let’s go and look for clues.”

“Alright, Sherlock,” she took his hand and allowed him to lead her outside, squinting around at the dusty, barren wilderness that surrounded them. “Well, this is… nice. Romantic.” 

The Doctor remained silent, his eyes cast down, and Clara followed his gaze to the base of the TARDIS, underneath which lay the splintered remains of a wooden hut. 

“Wizard of Oz?” Clara asked, and the Doctor broke away from her, circling the blue box apprehensively, occasionally prodding at a fragment with his foot, before sighing in relief. 

“Looks clear. But the wood… the fracture pattern…” 

“…is from where you broke it. By landing on it. Yeah. Real clever.” 

“No, it’s imbued with limbic resonance…” he trailed off, pulling pieces out from underneath the TARDIS and tossing them into a rough pile beside Clara, stopping to sniff the odd piece or probe it with his fingers. “Oh, she’s clever. Dammit, she’s clever.” 

“You said limbic resonance, so it’s…” Clara wrinkled her nose. “Sentient wood?” 

“Yep,” he concurred, as the pile began to vibrate lightly beside Clara, the pieces emitting a low humming noise. “Sentient wood that’s been programmed to rearrange itself, should it be broken.”

“Right…” Clara said, not really understanding, before shrieking lightly as the shards arranged themselves into a jagged but legible set of coordinates. “ _Oh._ Right. That’s… clever, yep.”

The Doctor scooped the wood into his arms and rose to his feet, beaming from ear to ear. “So, we’ve got a location, Clara. And that means we’ve probably got a wife. And that means we’ve got Emma.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara follow the coordinates River left them... but what will they find? Her? Emma? Or something much more sinister?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this week... I promise they get longer after this!

They piled back into the TARDIS in a mess of splinters and hopeful smiles, the Doctor’s hands running lightly over switches and keyboards as he entered the coordinates spelt out by the wood. “It’s a base,” he narrated, as he deposited the fragments into a box under the console floor. “In an asteroid belt, out towards Elvirnos. Nice place, out of the way, excellent Wi-Fi signal.” 

“Wi-Fi?” Clara asked, raising an eyebrow at the reference. “You get Wi-Fi in space?” 

“Of course you do,” the Doctor told her tartly, as though the answer should be obvious. “How else can you brag about your latest exploits on the galactic interweb?” 

“…that’s weird. But Wi-Fi… would she need Wi-Fi? I mean… I’d have thought my experiences would have put her off.” 

“Clara,” the Doctor rolled his eyes in her general direction. “The Wi-Fi comment was throwaway, and I’d like to note that your experiences never kept you off Facebook for longer than an hour at a time. Much to my chagrin.” 

“Yeah, alright,” Clara wrinkled her nose at him in irritation. “Push the button, go on.” 

The Doctor dithered momentarily. “Look,” he said after a short pause, fumbling over his words clumsily. “This is _too_ easy. Emma probably isn’t going to be here, it’s more likely to be River, and to be clues towards Emma. So don’t…. you know, get your hopes up too much.” 

“I know,” Clara assured him, smiling at him tightly. “I just want to know what’s there now. Whether River is safe or not. Please. So push the button.” 

The Doctor gave her a small, reassuring smile as he disengaged the handbrake, and Clara felt her stomach swoop as they transcended the galaxy in a matter of seconds, her heart leaping up to her mouth as they landed and the Doctor threw open the doors with his usual reckless abandon, sticking one hand outside to test the atmosphere. 

“Cormoran Base Twelve,” he informed her after a moment, gesturing grandiosely to what appeared, to Clara, to be an identical base to every other one she had ever visited. Location notwithstanding. “And hopefully River.” 

She approached the doors warily, sticking her head outside and looking from left to right, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “It looks a bit… dark. Is it meant to be dark?” 

“Probably night mode,” the Doctor said in a way that indicated he was really just hoping for the best, brandishing the sonic until the lights flickered on, and then smirking in self-satisfaction. “See? Wakey wakey time for River.” 

“Right,” she said, allowing him to step outside the sanctuary of the TARDIS first and then looping her arm through his in a mutually reciprocal gesture of solidarity. “So… it’s just this quiet cos she’s asleep, right?” 

“Almost definitely,” the Doctor said with a cool certainty that meant he was probably lying. “Most bases like this power down and have a night mode to conserve power and allow human occupants the chance to sleep. Much like the Drum.” 

“Right. Just ideally maybe minus the ghosts, yeah? Because ghosts right here and right now would be bad. Ghosts would be really quite catastrophically terrible.” 

“Clara.” 

“What?” 

“You’re nervous rambling. I’m sure everything is fine. No ghosts. No Tivolians. Calm down. And maybe relinquish your grip slightly, I’d like to keep both my arms well into my next regeneration.” 

“Sorry,” she muttered at once, releasing her hold on him as they turned a corner. “Do you actually know where you’re going or are we just wandering at will?” 

“It’s an asteroid base, Clara,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes theatrically. “All the corridors will eventually lead back to the central control room. It’s not like you can just wander off and fall into space. Although I did manage that once. Bit of a long story.” 

“So you think we’re just going to stumble across the…” Clara fell silent as they rounded a second corner and found themselves at the heart of the base. “Shit.”

The control panels were ripped from their desks, computer screens shattered and chairs overturned. A layer of shredded paper covered the floor, and there was an overpowering smell of oil, coffee and burning. In one corner, a generator hummed feebly, and as they stood taking in the scene, it wheezed to an apologetic halt, the lights dimming around them. 

“Doctor?” Clara asked, finding his hand and squeezing it tightly, feeling him reciprocate. “Is she…” 

“I don’t know,” he confessed, chewing his lip as he listened for tell-tale sounds of life. “She might be here, I’d need to access the security feeds, but the screens are knackered. If we can find something to project an image onto a wall with, I can try to access the databanks, but it’s tenuous at best. We’d be lucky as hell.”

“So you want us to poke around in the debris in search of a space-projector?” 

“Basically, yep,” he confirmed, popping the _p_ as he spoke. “Good luck.” 

“Great,” she muttered under her breath, whipping out her phone to use as a torch and shining it around her in the hunt for usable tech. As she poked through the debris warily with her foot, the light caught a flash of metal and she crouched, unearthing a simple golden band from underneath a nest of shredded chair padding. “Doctor?”

“What? Did you find a projector?” 

“No, I found… I found…” 

He stumbled across the room inelegantly, holding out his hand to Clara in trepidation as she laid the ring in his palm. “Her wedding band,” he said thickly, closing his fingers around it protectively, his eyes misting with unshed tears. “Oh, River…”

“We can’t give up,” Clara insisted, turning away to hide her tears and instead probing under a desk with one arm, groping around in the dark. “She wouldn’t want us to be disheartened by something so soppy.” 

“No,” he concurred, his voice choked with tears that they both magnanimously ignored. “She’d want us to fight.” 

“Yes she would,” Clara agreed, grinning as her hand closed around a small metal unit. “And this would be a good place to start.” She held up a pocket projection unit to the Doctor, and watched him beam in triumph. 

“Right,” he all but snatched it from her and sat at one of the desks, plugging it into a computer unit and sonicking the socket determinedly. Blue code began to display at lightning speed across the adjacent wall, and his brows furrowed as he scanned it for meaning, whistling appreciatively. “She knew what she was doing. She’s made the security about fifty feet deep.” 

“Can you get past it?” Clara asked, leaning over his shoulder and squinting at the scrolling text, unable to keep up as it moved in two directions simultaneously.

“Please,” he scoffed immodestly, fingers beginning to fly across the keyboard as he spoke, tapping out lines of counter-code. “Of course. It’s a basic code that we Time Lords learnt in our cots.” 

“Alright, show-off,” Clara muttered, watching him with some fondness and planting a kiss on his cheek despite her mild irritation. “Don’t get big-h… _whoa._ ” 

The code disappeared, replaced instead by a video file. The Doctor hovered the cursor tantalisingly over the play button, and Clara leant over and clicked before she could stop herself. 

Onscreen, River’s face appeared, larger than life but gaunter than either of them remembered. With false optimism, the River in the recording began to speak. “So, sweeties. Assuming you’re watching this – which I know you are, because you’re clever and you’ll overcome what they did to you – hello you gorgeous gorgeous things. This is day… oh, I don’t know, twenty-seven, on this base… it gets a little hard to tell the difference after a while. Not the same as earth-time, but I’ll go with twenty-seven. I digress. Anyway, I’ve been doing my research, and I’d like to have made a big fancy diagram for you, but frankly the Photoshop on this thing is well out of date, so I’m just going to talk instead. So here we go, the main headline: Emma isn’t dead. Hurrah! Hope that allays a few fears for you. The whole thing was almost definitely completely illusory. Now, you probably think I’m being optimistic here, so let me fill you in on what happened after you pressed those damn buttons, and thus provide a little evidence.” 

There was the sound of notes being shuffled off-camera. 

“Right. So you both pressed those buttons and shit went south pretty quick after you hit the floor, which you _did,_ by the way, and it was terrifying. I went for the big enforcer bloke and I think I broke his neck, I’m not really sure – I know you’ll be scowling, Doctor, but he hurt my family and he had it coming. He went down and after that it all got a little blurry, but when it was over, that bitch had teleported off with you both and Emma’s body, and I’d sort of… destroyed a few things. So I searched the enforcer over, and found he had a pocket full of these little nanobot… things.”

She held up a vial which appeared to be empty, shaking it fractionally and then frowning.

“You can’t see them, but they _are_ there. I’ve done as much experimentation as I can but they appear to be designed to temporarily time loop a person’s physical processes. Breathing, heart rate, brain function. Administered correctly, they can make a person appear dead for periods of up to an hour. At this point, sweeties, you’ll have questions, to which the only answer is: I tested them on myself. And look! Not dead. I would’ve used a test subject, but this is a terribly backwater base, so I made do for science.” 

The Doctor frowned, then grinned with pride. 

“The quantum shade… well, I analysed video footage – really, all those cameras… you’d have thought they’d have taken a little more care – and it appears to have been a manner of hologram. Combined, I would hypothesise that our buddy the enforcer applied some kind of temporary tattoo to Emma – I’ve seen similar ones, although with _far_ naughtier functions – and administered both a sedative _and_ the nanobots, in order to create the illusion of death. Enough to make you believe it. Enough that you would press those buttons, which I’m assuming have wiped your memory – I’ve seen such things before, though again, for much naughtier purposes.” 

She smiled warmly at them both, cutting through the tiredness and the fatigue that was evident in her eyes.

“She’s alive. I honestly believe with every fibre of my being, she’s alive. Whoever these people are – and I have a pretty good idea – they’re powerful. They don’t want her dead, they want her for their own ends, they want to weaponise her against you both – and god knows who else. But both of you: she is in danger. You will have to fight for her – you absolutely must. Because they will turn her against you and I know that will break you, I know that you will not be able to withstand that. So please, my loves. Hunt for her. Find her. Love her.” 

She sighed deeply, looking away from the camera for a moment, and when she looked back her eyes were wet with tears. 

“I know I don’t have long left before they find me, my darlings, so please. Promise me that you will stay strong. Promise me you will find her. And promise me that you will never, ever give up on love. No matter what. If they find me, please… if they find me and do what I am certain they will, please stay strong. And know I love you both with all my heart.”

The video went black, and Clara reached for the Doctor’s hand in silence, squeezing it in her own and looking to him with a lump in her throat. 

“They’ve got her, haven’t they?” she asked in a small voice, and he nodded in quiet resignation, his free hand raking through his hair as he squeezed his eyes shut and replied in an equally restrained tone. 

“Yes, I think we can reasonably conclude that.” 

“Who are _they_?” 

“Clara… I’m beginning to think… and please don’t laugh me out of here…” he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I think it might be the Time Lords.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a bid to discover more about the Doctor's theory, he and Clara hunt down Ashildr to try and get some answers. What they learn, however, is unexpected...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drama and angst is coming, y'all. Hope you're prepared for this.

“The Time Lords?” Clara furrowed her brow as she struggled to process the Doctor’s revelation. “But Gallifrey’s lost. You’ve told me a thousand times, Doctor… it’s lost, it’s gone.”

He sighed, chewing his lip as he contemplated how to best explain his hunch. “You remember all those years ago, when Missy tried to… well, the Cyberman thing?” 

Clara nodded, remaining silent as she waited for him to continue. 

“Missy said something to me when we were alone together – stop scowling – and it always…” he sighed again, running a hand through his hair. “The coordinates she gave me were wrong, certainly. She wanted to mess with my head. But she told me that Gallifrey was in another dimension, and it wasn’t _lost_ there. Which would indicate…” 

“That the Time Lords know where they are, and they might be using intergalactic GPS to get out?” Clara grinned a little at the Doctor’s surprised expression. “Oh yeah, not just this.” 

“It’s…” the smiled faded from his eyes as the reality of the situation struck him. “It’s entirely plausible. Missy found a way out, but that’s Missy for you – she was never one for their rules and regulations, never one to do as she was told. I’m just concerned that someone’s found her way out, and they’re trying to use it. They’ll have to be careful, of course – ripping holes that large in the interdimensional fabric of the universe is dangerous – but they’re not ones to care about collateral. If making a triumphant return to our universe means burning up a few hundred planets, that’s a risk they’ll take without hesitation.” 

“But what about the Time War?” Clara asked. “If they come back to this universe, they’ll start the Time War afresh, and then… well, we’re fucked.” 

“Clara,” he looked up at her and met her gaze, imparting the truth to her unwillingly. “It’s possible that if they have Emma, then they think she is enough of a weapon to be able to face down the Daleks.” 

“But…” Clara’s lip trembled, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s not a weapon, she’s a child… and then there’s the prophecy, what was it? ‘They will stand in the ruins of Gallifrey’?”

“The Time Lords are great ones for semantics,” he confessed. “But not ones for sentimental attachments. They may be viewing the prophecy as an indication that Gallifrey will be destroyed, and then seek a new planet to colonise. From the ashes, a new Gallifrey could rise,” his tone became bitter. “Stronger and wiser than before, founded on the back of one terrified little girl. The mighty Time Lords, using children to save them from their poxy wars.” 

“I mean,” Clara looked to her lap, attempting a stab at optimism. “They might not have Emma. It might not be them, right? It could be anyone; it could just be someone who we’ve pissed off who wants to play a little game with us. Well. Quite a big, complicated game, with really dire consequences, but still… we can live in hope, right? We can pray they’re not going to hurt Emma, that they’re treating her with kindness?” 

“Of course,” the Doctor soothed, almost convincing himself with his own certainty as he pulled Clara into his arms and stroked her hair, feeling her begin to weep into his chest. “Of course we can. Hope is a beautiful thing, Clara.”

“I won’t let anyone harm her,” she mumbled into his shirt, looking up at him with wide, wet, and yet defiant eyes. “I won’t let her be turned into some kind of weapon of mass destruction. She’s a child. _Our_ child.” 

“I know,” he assured her gently, placing his hand on her cheek and brushing a tear from her lashes with his thumb. “I know, love. We’ll save her, Clara, we’ll save her and we’ll save River. We’ll be a family again.” 

Clara looked up at him, her tears forgotten as determination blazed in her eyes. “So where do we start? We can’t just pop on over to Gallifrey without shattering… that… dimension… thingy.” 

“Correct,” the Doctor grinned at her lopsidedly. “So we need to hunt for Ground Zero. In this case, that would be one immortal Viking girl.” 

“How the hell are we meant to find Ashildr?” Clara groaned. “She’s managed to give you the slip before, remember? That’s how we ended up on bloody Trap Street.” 

The Doctor rolled his eyes, wounded by her lack of faith in his abilities. “Have a little faith in me, please,” he implored her. “And the TARDIS. She’s an expert at finding immortals. Mostly. I mean, she can do it nine times out of ten.” 

“And the one time she can’t?”

“I swear at her for a while until she works a bit harder,” he winked, then held out his hand to her. “Come on, you.”

“Shouldn’t we bring that hard-drive with us?” Clara asked, casting her gaze back over the computer River had used. “I mean, in case anyone else comes calling?” 

“This is why I keep you around,” the Doctor concurred with pride, yanking the device unceremoniously from the wreck of the computer it rested in, depositing it in his trouser pocket. “That and the hugging.” 

“And the fact you do really require a carer, yep,” Clara took his hand and smiled, beginning to walk with him back to the TARDIS. “And the fact I’m your wife. Not that I mind any of the above.” 

“Should hope not,” he teased, stepping inside and wiring the hard-drive up to the console, programming settings and muttering under his breath in Gallifreyan to the ship. “She can start scanning, but it might take a while for any results to be generated.” 

“How long is-” Clara fought back a yawn, taken by surprise by her own exhaustion as adrenaline faded from her system. “A while?” 

“Few hours,” he informed her, grimacing at the prospect of having to wait. “You’re tired, you should sleep.” 

“Sleep?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and yawning again, feeling her eyes beginning to droop. “How am I meant to sleep when my wife and daughter are missing?”

“Clara,” he said gently, pausing in his task to steer her over to the reading chair insistently. “You’re upset. I know. But you need to rest. I need you at your best, and tired is not your best. You get cranky when you’re tired.” 

Clara pouted but sank into the comfortable embrace of the armchair with a sigh. “Shut up,” she mumbled, curling her legs up underneath her. “Do not.”

“Do so,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “Rest.” 

“Not going to,” she said obstinately, resting her head on her hand and watching him through half-open eyes. “Gonna watch you all night.”

“If you say so,” he acquiesced, resuming his task, and when he looked over moments later he found his wife fast asleep, a faint smile on her face. “My Clara…” he whispered fondly, slipping off his jacket and crossing the console room to lay it over her, smoothing her hair back from her face. “Rest now.”

 

* * *

 

When Clara awoke, she was momentarily discombobulated by her surroundings. As recollection stirred at her consciousness, she sat bolt upright, the Doctor’s jacket sliding to the floor, and scowled darkly at her husband. “You let me sleep.” She said accusatorily to the seemingly empty room, knowing the Time Lord would be close by. “I _told_ you…” 

The Doctor peered at her from the opposite side of the console, a penitent expression on his face as he looked her up and down. “Sorry,” he said at once, then backtracked: “Not all that sorry. You needed the sleep, Clara, you were exhausted. Besides, you didn’t miss anything much. Some swearing in Gallifreyan, and the TARDIS chastising me. All very dull.” 

“Did you find anything?” Clara asked, stretching to ease the discomfort in her limbs. “Any sign of our least favourite Viking?” 

“I’ve got a location,” he divulged nervously, jabbing at the screen with a finger. “And it’s… you know, correct linearly. She’ll know what we’re talking about.” 

“Always a plus,” Clara said drily, getting to her feet and immediately staggering forwards on unsteady legs, the Doctor catching her before she could hit the floor. “Thanks.” 

“My pleasure,” he smiled at her with reservation, worry etched on his face as he looked down at her. “Be careful.” 

“I’m fine,” she assured him, placing her palms on his chest and nuzzling into him, feeling his arms wrap round her waist in return. “Just got a dead leg.”

“I know,” he hummed into her hair, resting his cheek against her temple to glean some degree of physical reassurance. “I just worry…” 

“You don’t need to,” she assured him. “I promise I’m fine. Can we go and beat up some immortals?” 

“We can,” he assured her with a wry chuckle, trying to dismiss her words as a joke. “Just don’t try to kick anyone. You can’t do any damage from the floor.” 

“Shut up,” Clara took half a step back and looked up at him, trying to hide the fear she felt in the pit of her stomach. “Can we go?” 

“Only if you promise me one thing.”

“Name it.” 

“Keep your temper.” 

“When have I ever _not_ kept my temper?” Clara asked, narrowing her eyes at the Doctor, before amending: “Don’t even _think_ about answering that, actually.” 

“Look, just promise…” 

“The bitch is the one who arranged for my daughter to be taken from me and my memory to be wiped. She shattered my world into a million pieces, so I’ll do whatever the fuck I like to her,” Clara reached over and checked the screen, then released the handbrake before the Doctor could argue. “Got that?” 

“No violence.” 

“None at all,” Clara smiled sweetly, dancing away from the Doctor and stepping outside. “None whatsoever.” 

Ashildr was sat in an armchair in a wood-panelled study, surveying the TARDIS with a measured gaze. “Hello,” she said sardonically. “What a surp- _ow_!” 

Before anyone could react, Clara had lunged forwards and grabbed the girl by the hair, yanking her to her feet and shoving her against the wall, twisting one arm behind her back viciously. “Where the _fuck_ is my daughter?”

“Clara!” the Doctor exclaimed with abject horror, taking two steps towards the women and watching as Clara only yank the immortal’s arm higher. “Let her go!” 

“No,” she snarled, her temper blazing white-hot. “She knows something and she’s damn well going to tell me.” 

“You promised.” 

“I did no such thing,” Clara snapped, her eyes hardening as she stared over to her husband. “Does the sonic have a setting for this situation? One for pain, ideally?” 

“Clara,” he said again, holding up his hands in a placating manner in an attempt to appease her. “I’m not saying you’re overreacting here-” 

“I am…” Ashildr muttered, and Clara snarled in response.

“-but you’re lowering yourself to her level like this. Let her go, Clara. Let her go and we can talk. Clara, please. This isn’t our way.” 

“Funny, cos it’s making me feel better.” 

“I know,” he said softly. “God knows, I’m angry too. But you need to be the bigger person. Let her go, OK?”

Clara scowled blackly, considering his words for a few seconds, and then stepped back, releasing her hold on Ashildr and moving to stand beside the Doctor. “Where is she?”

“Oh hello to you too,” Ashildr snarked, flexing her arm experimentally and concluding there was no lasting damage. “Lovely to see you both. How are you?” 

“Let’s skip the pleasantries,” the Doctor suggested. “I don’t think Clara’s blood pressure can take them, and my patience is thin enough as is.” 

“Very well,” Ashildr settled herself back in her chair, the picture of composure as she crossed her legs and surveyed the two travellers. “I know why you’re here.” 

“Good,” the Doctor replied at once, sinking into the opposite seat and meeting the girl’s gaze steadily. “So you’ll be able to help us.” 

“I was following orders,” she said at once, her tone unruffled as she faced down the Time Lord. “I did as I was told and the street stayed safe.” 

“You know who else used the defence ‘I was following orders’?” Clara asked no one in particular, but her husband and the immortal ignored her. 

“ _Who_ told you things?” the Doctor probed, determined to get answers. “Because I have a suspicion, and the only person who can answer it is you.” 

“Isn’t this a subversion?” Ashildr asked, smirking as she spoke. “ _You_ need _my_ help with something. You, my creator. You, the one who ruined my death and cursed me to live like this.” 

“Yes, cut the angsty teenager crap, thanks,” Clara snapped, in no mood to deal with such dramatics. “Tell him what you know. Don’t try to be clever.”

“I’m just enjoying watching you beg,” Ashildr’s smirk widened as she looked between the two of them. “It’s something to behold.” 

“I’m not begging,” the Doctor said coldly. “I’m appealing to your last shreds of human decency. You convinced us our child was dead, you wiped our memories and you sold us out. Who to? Who’s pulling your strings?” 

“I could tell you,” Ashildr mused, clearly enjoying playing the game. “But where would the fun be in that?”

“The fun in that,” the Doctor’s voice grew cold as he looked down at her. “Would be that I wouldn’t have to throw you into a supernova. You’re functionally immortal, certainly, but even your little chip couldn’t stand up to that.” 

Ashildr’s smile flickered only slightly in the wake of the threat. “My,” she raised her eyebrows in feigned surprise. “They were right about you. The Oncoming Storm. Not one to cross.” 

“Who the hell are ‘they’?” the Doctor asked, glaring down at the girl. “You use the term as if it’s a hypothetical concept.” 

“You’re very slow,” Ashildr rolled her eyes at his failure to grasp the evident. “The prophecy, Doctor. You know where it came from, and you know who Emma is.”

“Is?” Clara’s expression lifted at the word. “So she’s alive?”

Ashildr scowled, annoyed by her own mistake. “Yes,” she admitted with a small shrug. “For now. She’s dangerous – that’s why they want her. They want to use her to their advantage.” 

“Let me guess, you were promised wealth and power beyond your wildest dreams if you complied?” the Doctor asked, the disdain clear in his tone.

“No,” Ashildr was quick to dismiss his suggestion. “I was told my people would be safe.” 

“Since when did you care about anyone other than yourself?” Clara asked, her frustration growing. “You betrayed us. You betrayed our daughter. I know what happened to your children – how could you do this to ours?” 

“Because to me my people were my family,” Ashildr looked down, her bravado suddenly dissolving. “I’m sorry for what I did. I didn’t know River was going to do what she did. I lost everything afterwards.” 

“My heart bleeds for you.” Clara said cattily, and the Doctor shot her a sharp look.

“Doctor, you’re being _slow_ ,” Ashildr said again, regaining some composure. “I can’t tell you who they are, but… did you not recognise the technology? I know how long it has been, but you know in your heart who it truly was, don’t you? You’ve worked it out?” 

“But…” the Doctor began to shake his head in disbelief, a refusal to face up to what he had contemplated before. “No. No, it can’t be… how? How could they have?” 

“I don’t purport to understand it, Doctor,” Ashildr conceded. “All I know is that I followed my orders and was assured of my safety. There’s nothing more I can do for you.” 

“There must be,” the Doctor argued, clenching his fists reflexively. “They would have known this would happen, they’d have a contingency plan.”

“Oh, they do. They told me I could give you one hint.” Ashildr looked up at him and smiled tightly. “Confess.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor prepares to make his confession, but Clara insists on accompanying him. What they find awaiting them will test them to the extreme, with consequences more serious than they could ever have predicted...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the angst!

“Confess?” Clara asked, looking between Ashildr and the Doctor, noting the look of blind panic on his face and feeling her own heartrate begin to thunder in response. “Confess what? I don’t understand.” 

“Ashildr…” the Doctor’s voice was low, the anger of the past few minutes gone. “How do they expect me to do that?” 

The immortal rolled her eyes impatiently, scoffing: “Please. Stop pretending, for all our sakes, Doctor. We both know that you understand perfectly how you must confess. We both know that you’ve prepared.” 

“How could they know that?”

“Because they know your sentimentality. And they know that after you nearly lost her,” Ashildr jerked a thumb towards Clara. “You would have taken the necessary steps, should it come down to it. You’ve been ready for this moment for years, Doctor – feigning ignorance to protect her won’t work.” 

“What steps?” Clara asked, seizing the Doctor by the hand and tugging him round to face her, trying to force him to meet her gaze. “Doctor?” 

He sighed deeply, pulling away from her and running both hands through his hair as he realised he owed her an explanation. “You remember my confession dial?” he asked after a moment, unsure how to begin. “From all that time ago?” 

“Of course,” she said at once, not understanding his apprehension. “The one you ended up not needing, daft man.” 

“After Skaro… after Skaro I tried to forget about it. I tried to move on. Things happened with you, and with River, and then you got pregnant and Cardiff happened…” his eyes filled with tears as he remembered her lying before him, cold and lifeless, and the ensuing miracle that had occurred. “I knew after that I had to be prepared. So I confessed again. Think of it as amending my will.” 

Clara glared at him. “And you didn’t tell me any of this because…?” 

“You were a little preoccupied with things including gestating our child, and not being dead.”

“So I was busy not being dead, and you were busy… what, pondering your own death? Great. Not morbid at all.” 

“Clara…” he sighed again, needing her to understand. “I just wanted to have a…” 

“A get-out-of-jail-free card,” she punched him in the upper arm, scowling darkly as he complained. “You prat. You would’ve left River and gone and what? Self-immolated if I’d died? Yeah, great, totally heroic. You gave me that bloody long speech about not giving up, when you were willing to do the same thing!” 

“Clara, it’s because I’d seen that point of view that I was able to give you that speech,” he admitted, his tone low and urgent. “And I couldn’t bear to think of you enduring those dark thoughts.” 

“You’re still a prat,” she conceded, but she felt her anger wane and slipped her arm around his waist nonetheless, nuzzling her head against his shoulder before turning her attention to Ashildr. “What does this confessing involve? How do we do it?” 

“ _You_ don’t do-” 

“No,” Clara said sternly, holding up one finger before the immortal could continue. “Where he goes, I go. Package deal. End of argument.” 

“Very well,” Ashildr concurred, raising her eyebrows. “You must enter the confession dial and make your peace with what demons lay within.” 

“How does one enter a confession dial?” the Doctor enquired, and Ashildr shot him a withering look. “What? Funnily enough they don’t teach you things like this in the Academy, it’s more focused on practical subjects, not the rumination upon your hopefully-not-incumbent death.”

“I would imagine,” she said drily. “That you need only hold it and think of something spiritual and deep. Something to do with acceptance of fate. I look forward to finding out what.” 

“Please,” Clara scoffed at the idea. “Like we’re going to do this with you here. Like he’s got it on h-” she caught the look on the Doctor’s face as he delved into an inner pocket of his jacket. “Seriously? _Seriously_?” 

“Be prepared,” he deadpanned, eventually extracting the burnished gold disc from his pocket and holding it out to her in the palm of his hand. “Scouts honour.” 

“You’d be a rubbish scout,” Clara quipped, her shaking hands betraying the nervousness she was battling to conceal. “You’d just set things on fire.” 

“Clara,” he said gently, his eyes full of concern. “This is going to be difficult. Are you sure about this?” 

“Of course I’m sure.” 

He nodded once, tightly, then turned his attention to their immortal companion. “Ashildr,” he asked gravely. “What do we get out of this?” 

“They didn’t provide detailed instructions, Doctor. This isn’t intergalactic Cluedo – there isn’t an envelope in there with Whodunnit in it. All I know is that things may become clearer for you.” 

“Will we suffer?” 

“When did your people ever _not_ make you suffer?” Ashildr asked, her tone belied by the touch of sadness in her eyes. “You have my utmost faith in you.” 

“That’s reassuring,” Clara muttered. “The immortal Viking who facilitated nicking our daughter has faith in us.” 

“Clara,” the Doctor squeezed her hand chastisingly. “Be polite. And whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand.”

“Why?” 

“Because I, the Time Lord known as the Doctor, am ready to be held accountable for the sins I have committed and the pain I have inflicted. I am ready to come to terms with my past, and make my peace, with the woman I love at my side.”

There was a dull _pop,_ a rush of hot air, and when Clara opened her eyes she found herself stood, still hand in hand with the Doctor, in a room that to her eyes resembled the TARDIS console room. 

“Doctor?” she asked after a moment of confusion. “Is this…?” 

“The confession dial, yes,” he looked around them warily, taking half a step towards the console and inspecting it summarily. “No handbrake. No controls. Just illusory. Apparently the best they could do.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked, feeling a touch discomfited by the familiar yet vaguely threatening surroundings. “Split up and look for clues?” 

“Clara, there’s a reason that we’re here. It’s designed to throw us, it’s designed to make us uncomfortable and provoke something from us. Splitting up could prove very, very dangerous.” 

“So, stay together and look for clues?” 

“This isn’t Scooby Doo,” he groused, but squeezed her hand anyway. “That sounds like a safe plan to me.” 

“Since when did you do safe?” 

“Since there’s someone stood at my blackboard,” he said quietly, nodding his head to the upper levels, and Clara spun on her heel to take in the figure, their back to the pair, garbed all in grey with a mass of silver curls down to their waist. “Who are you?” the Doctor called. 

The figure turned to face them slowly, revealing a face deeply lined by the passage of time, dark eyes wearied by the years. She smiled almost bitterly at them, raising one ancient finger to point into the labyrinth of corridors. “You are not here to ask questions,” she informed them in a cracked, rasping voice. “You are here to confess.” 

Clara shivered, edging closer to the Doctor for reassurance. “Confess what?”

“That is for you to discover,” the crone told them simply. “You will discover, and then you must make a choice.” 

“A choice?” 

“Yes, a choice,” the crone waved a hand at them dismissively, evidently irritated by their questions. “Go. You serve no function to me here. Go. Observe. Confess.”

The Doctor took half an unwilling step towards the corridor, pausing to look back at the crone and murmur something under his breath. 

“What?” Clara whispered, but he only shook his head and led her away from the console room, his palm sweaty in hers as they trudged down the darkened corridor. “Who was that?”

“I don’t know,” he told her with an apologetic shrug. “Probably an interface or similar. She seems very keen for us to get a move on, so either the Time Lords have grown even more impatient for my company, or they’re looking forward to watching us suffer.” 

“Full of reassurances, you are,” Clara rolled her eyes as the corridor gave way – quite unexpectedly – to a room which was painfully familiar to them both. “Doctor…” 

“I know.” 

The walls were painted with a thousand galaxies in a myriad shades of blue and purple, while a gently pulsing nebula of stars covered the expanse of the ceiling above them. In the centre of the room there was a midnight-blue cot, and Clara approached it with her breathe held, recognising the Gallifreyan words embossed on the headboard. For one irrational moment, she felt her heart soar, praying she would find her daughter there, safely ensconced in the warm familiarity of the nursery that her husband and wife had worked so hard to design, but she instead found the blankets neatly arranged and empty of the little girl. 

“Doctor…” she said again, feeling tears burn at her eyes, and she swiped at them impatiently as she turned to face him. “Doctor, what is this… why?” 

“I don’t know,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms, hating that he had to admit his ignorance. “I don’t…” 

“Mama,” came Emma’s voice, young and full of hope. “Daddy.” 

“Emma?” Clara asked at once, looking around her in desperation and finding the pair of them alone. “Emma? Are you here?”

“It’s a recording,” the Doctor told her, his eyes wet as he took a deep breath to fortify himself. “Just a recording.” 

“Daddy,” Emma’s voice said again, still disembodied but sharper now. “Daddy, why did you create me? You knew I was the hybrid.”

“A recording?” Clara asked, her eyes flashing dangerously as she looked up at him. “I swear to god, if they’ve got her and they’re using her…” 

“Selfishness,” he said loudly, ignoring his wife’s anger and addressing the voice in the hope of placating it and sparing further pain. “I was selfish. Clara wanted a baby. I knew what it would mean, but I wanted her to be happy. I was selfish. But I was not wrong in being so.”

Clara stared at him in open-mouthed shock, trying to process his words. “You knew?” she asked softly. “You knew what she would be?” 

“Of course I knew,” he confessed, looking to the floor as he mumbled: “But I wanted you to be happy.” 

“I…” she was cut off by a door opening in the wall of the room, a dark archway beckoning them on enticingly. “You knew this would happen?” 

“The door? Or the Emma thing?” 

“The Emma thing!” 

“No!” he said at once, approaching the doorway with Clara trailing at his side. “I knew there would be a risk, but I thought I could keep her safe.” 

“That went well, didn’t it?” Clara spat, and he turned to look at her with hurt written on his face. 

“Clara, I did it for you,” he said softly. “I knew what she would be, but I wanted you to be happy. I saw how badly you wanted a child, and I could never say no to you. How could I deny you what you wanted? How could I live with myself, knowing you were longing for something?” 

“You could have _explained!_ I would have understood!”

“No you wouldn’t,” he said at once, but there was no anger in his words, only pragmatism. “You wouldn’t have understood, because you’re too like me.” 

Before Clara could respond, the corridor revealed to them a second bedroom, this one more brightly painted with vivid murals of illustrated characters on the walls. At the centre of the room stood a white-painted bed, made up with a pink gingham quilt and a mound of cuddly toys, and as Clara looked around she took in the paintings tacked to the walls, the neatly alphabetised bookshelf, the discarded pairs of small sandals, and understood.

“Is this…?”

“Emma’s bedroom, mark two,” the Doctor confirmed. “Yes.”

“What did you mean, too like me?”

“Yes, daddy, what did you mean?” Emma’s voice came from nowhere, sounding older than before. Less high-pitched, more self-assured, and a touch more bitter. “Tell her.” 

“Clara…” he began, looking away from her in shame as he began his explanation. “Clara, you have to understand that for a long time, I thought we _were_ the hybrid. I thought we were the worst it could possibly be.” 

“But we’re two people.” 

“Yes, but together… you’re too much like me. Reckless. Assertive. Willing to take risks,” he sighed. “I was convinced we were collectively a hybrid. A team, as it were – two entities forming one unit. And then… then you started hankering after a baby, and I realised the truth. We weren’t the hybrid. We couldn’t possibly be.” 

“So why did you say yes to having Emma?!” 

“Because I wanted you to be happy! Because I tried to lie to myself and tell myself that we were the hybrid and that she couldn’t possibly be!” 

“So you’re saying this is my fault? I was just too persuasive?” 

“No,” he said wearily, passing his hands over his face tiredly. “I’m saying it was mine.” 

There was a soft _click_ as a doorway appeared in the far wall of the room, and Clara took the Doctor’s hand in her own, looking up at him with gentle eyes. “Doctor,” she assured him, her tone calmer than it had been seconds before. “I was culpable in this. You are not the only one who has done wrong.” 

“But I _knowingly_ did wrong.” 

“Yes, you did,” Emma’s voice startled them both. “You knowingly created me. Why not take a few more steps forward? Why not find out some more uncomfortable truths?” 

“You know, I like you a lot better in real life,” Clara attempted a stab at humour as she addressed her daughter’s voice, trying to assuage the tension that permeated the room. “You’re less sassy. And much less bitter.” 

“This _is_ real, mother. Do keep up. My life flashing before your eyes, and you not being there for a single moment of it. Seeing as you’re so unwilling to embrace the future…” 

The room changed around them, now painted a dark, oppressive shade of purple. The white-painted furniture had been replaced with minimalistic black pieces, the childhood books missing from the bookshelves in favour of angst-ridden novels about young women unlucky in love, accompanied by masses of dark, fragrant candles. 

“This is my dark phase,” their daughter’s voice said, now the mocking drawl of a teenager. “This is about the time I decide that mummy and daddy were a waste of space who never came for me, and give up on hoping. This is about the time things get _twisted._ ” 

“But we’re on the TARDIS,” Clara argued, feeling lost. “This is the TARDIS.” 

“Oh, please,” Emma scoffed pityingly. “This is _a_ TARDIS. Like the Time Lords don’t have thousands lying around. Like they don’t have intelligent bedroom programming controls. Please keep up, mummy dearest.” 

“So we…”

“Missed everything? Yeah, pretty much. Wanna see the next room? That one’s really fun.” 

“Emma…” 

But the room was changing again, everything turning a soft shade of ivory, the satin bedspread covered with a slew of deep crimson rose petals. 

“You see; this is my wedding night. Pretty, isn’t it? It turns out even weapons are sometimes allowed lives. Mine involves getting wed, then getting laid. He’s a nice man. A colonel. You’d have hated him.”

“Emma,” the Doctor’s voice was low and dangerous, wearied by the ordeal. “What is the point of this? What more is there to confess?”

There was a soft _pop,_ and a cot appeared beside the bed. Clara felt her heart clench painfully, and she reached for the Doctor’s hand automatically, grateful for the warmth of his touch. “Oh, dad. So much. Like the fact you went against everything you stand for.” 

“What do you mean?” Clara asked in desperation. “And why can’t we see you?” 

A woman appeared on the edge of the bed, an infant cradled in her arms as she looked up at the Doctor and Clara with wide, hazel eyes that were clouded by hatred. “Is this better, mummy dear?” 

“I…” Clara floundered for words, uncertain how to address the situation. “You’re beautiful.” 

Emma laughed bitterly and tossed her dark hair off her face. “Ever the narcissist.” 

“What did you mean, about going against what he stands for?” Clara repeated, thrown by Emma’s temperament and unsure what else she could say.

“Oh, mummy,” Emma’s tone was mocking. “Don’t you remember? I know it’s patchy for dear old dad, but I would’ve thought you’d remember, even with your pudding brain. I’ll help. ‘What I did, I did without choice. But not in the name of the Doctor.’” 

“I confess,” the Doctor said quietly. “I confess to that absolutely. By creating you, I created a weapon. And yes, that goes against the promise I made. But I never saw you as a weapon, I saw you as my daughter. As _our_ daughter. I created you in the name of the Doctor, because to me you were never to be used like this. To me you were – and indeed _are_ – a child. Just a child. Not the hybrid, not some universe destroyer; a _child_. If I have done wrong – and I have – let me be punished. But let it be noted that I never intended any of this.” 

The Emma sat on the bed disappeared, and the colours of the room changed to a muted pink, light filtering in through a heavily curtained window. Clara looked up at her husband, her fear crystallising into calmness. 

“You never intended this,” she told him, smiling slightly. “You never set out to create a weapon. You knew of the hybrid, but you never pressured me into creating her in order to destroy worlds. Besides. It takes two to tango.” 

“It does,” came the voice of the crone they had seen in the console room, as she shuffled into the room on unsteady legs. “You both created me.” 

“I…” recognition dawned on Clara, and her eyes widened as she felt her heart leap. “Emma?” 

“Hello, mum and dad,” the old woman smiled at them tiredly, crossing to the bed and sinking onto it with relief. “Kept that little secret well, didn’t I?” 

“Oh god,” Clara mumbled, a thought striking her abruptly and stealing the breath from her lungs. “Do we have to see you die?” 

“Almost,” Emma sighed, then began to cough, her small frame shaking as she fought to regain control of her lungs. “I’m an old woman, and I have suffered much.” 

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said softly, crouching before her and taking both her hands in his. “My darling, I’m so sorry. For everything.” 

“If you’re truly sorry,” Emma rasped, one hand pulling away from her father and reaching into her grey robes. “If you’re sorry, do one thing for me.” 

She held out a gun, small and almost comical looking in its style, the implications associated with the weapon clear. She looked between the Doctor and Clara, her eyes imploring them both to help her. 

“You want us to kill you?” Clara asked, aghast by the prospect, by the idea of harming her daughter in any way. “Why?” 

“To destroy what you have made,” Emma rationalised calmly. “To end my suffering.” 

“To see how far we’re willing to go,” the Doctor realised, looking between his wife and daughter. “To see what we would do to get you back. A test.” 

“Indeed,” her lips curled into a smile as she offered the gun to him. “Will you?” 

“You seem… more benevolent,” Clara noted, watching the Doctor’s fists clench in refusal to touch the weapon. “Than the previous yous.” 

“I’m an old woman,” Emma wheezed. “I’ve had a long time to think about things. A long time to consider the possibilities.”

“How old is ‘old’ for you?” Clara asked with curiosity, unable to help herself. “Old in human terms, or his terms?” 

“Spoilers,” Emma quipped, and chuckled sadly with her mother at the turn of phrase. “Please. Help me.” 

“You want us to prove to them how far we would go for fear of losing you?” the Doctor asked distastefully, nose wrinkling at the idea. “Why?” 

“They want to see what they have to face.” 

“And if we… do the thing?” he continued, still not convinced. “What then?” 

“They do not share such things with me,” Emma confessed, with a small shrug. “Please. I implore you.” 

Clara reached for the gun before she could stop herself, her fingers curling around the cold metal as she picked it up, her decision already made. “It’s heavy,” she observed in wonder, as she held it at arm’s length, levelling it experimentally at the floor before raising it to her daughter’s chest. “This is the only way? By shooting you, we can get closer to… well, young you?” 

“Clara,” the Doctor said with horror from somewhere behind her, and she knew how much seeing her do this would hurt him, but found that she no longer cared. “Clara, you don’t have to do this.” 

“Is there any other way?” Clara asked Emma, who only shook her head sadly, and she felt determination burn through her. “Well then.” 

“Clara!”

“How far I’m willing to go?” Clara asked, almost rhetorically, before pulling the trigger and watching a burst of light erupt from the barrel of the gun, disappearing into her daughter’s chest. “All the way.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their ordeal in the confession dial, the Doctor and Clara find themselves stranded on an unknown planet with a dangerous foe... one who has a devastating revelation for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is being uploaded a little late in the day... AO3 was down.

As a pulse of light consumed the aged, hunched figure of Emma, the walls of the room melted away around them until they found themselves stood in the middle of an arid, windswept desert, a purple sun beating down on them unrelentingly and a scorching breeze stinging their skin. 

“You _shot_ her!” the Doctor exploded with a degree of indignation, turning to glare at his wife as she clenched her now-empty hands, scowling back at him in the heat. 

“I shot an _illusion_ to save our daughter. Get off your bloody high horse about it; like you wouldn’t have done the same. Besides, we’ve got bigger problems.” 

“We do not have a bigger problem than you using a gun! Real or otherwise!”

“Christ, you’re a sanctimonious prat sometimes,” Clara complained, raising one hand and pointing behind him. “I would reasonably argue that ‘pissed-off-looking old guy in red and gold’ would be a bigger problem than me _saving our lives._ ”

The Doctor swivelled on his heel and took in the figure approaching them, feeling his hearts thud painfully in his chest as comprehension dawned. “Clara, we need to leave,” he said urgently, taking her hand in his and tugging ineffectually. “We have to go. Now.” 

“How?” she asked incredulously, pulling away from him and giving him a withering look. “How, when we don’t have anywhere else to go? Don’t even have a TARDIS. He’s our best route off-world. See? He has a ship.”

“No, he’s our best route to your imminent death, Clara. Really. We need to run.” 

“Who _is_ he?” Clara frowned, not understanding the Doctor’s fear. “You look terrified, what is it?” 

“We need to-”

“Don’t bother trying to run,” the approaching figure drawled. “That’s his modus operandi, I realise, but neither of you are in any immediate danger from me. Much as I would like to kill you both, I would like to discuss our options first. Not to mention meet the human woman that the great and mighty Doctor took so many risks for.”

“Who are you?” Clara asked, squaring up to the stranger as best she could. “Because if you’re anyone important or clever, you’ll know that I’m not just some tiny, insignificant human. I convinced his people to save him, I convinced him to save his people, and I’m currently a _really_ pissed off mother, so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll back off.” 

“You are human, and thus inconsequential,” the stranger retorted, clearly unimpressed by her words. “You convinced _us_ to save him, which is something I bitterly regret. Had he died on that dull little planet, we wouldn’t have had to deal with the problems you’ve both caused. He’d have withered and died, and you’d have probably done something pathetically human like die of a broken heart, and we’d have had no more issues.” 

“You’d have been stuck with Koschei as your means of salvation though,” the Doctor quipped under his breath, unable to help himself. “Again. Because that went _so_ well last time.” 

Clara turned to him with an exasperated look. “Do not sass the random old dude. That’s my job. Besides, who the hell is Kos… that?” 

The Doctor snickered, half-chagrined. “Missy,” he informed her, with a tight smile. “And as for-” 

“As for the _random old dude,_ ” the stranger smirked broadly. “You, with your pithy lifespan and feeble abilities, may call me…”

“What he’s trying to say is his name is Rassilon,” the Doctor interjected, before adding in a bitter tone: “’The _Redeemer._ ’ Though what he redeemed, I’m not entirely sure – _I_ saved the Time Lords, _you_ just sat and twiddled your thumbs in that silly hat. Maybe he redeemed a coupon: commit one mass genocide, get another free.” 

“Always playing the fool, Doctor,” Rassilon shot him a withering look. “Child of earth, you will call me ‘Lord President,’ or you will not address me.” 

“You see, I could live with just not addressing you, frankly. But you’ve just tortured my husband and I, not to mention the fact you’ve probably taken my daughter, so I want some answers, mate.” 

“I will not answer the questions of humans.” 

“Oh, please,” the Doctor rolled his eyes, looking to the Lord President with disdain. “Like you don’t know what she is.”

“I will not answer the questions of disgusting freaks that serve only as abominations to our race,” Rassilon self-corrected, an expression of disgust on his face. “Why you chose to… to _breed_ with this thing, I will never know. And then to turn her into a science experiment, to taint the purity of the Time Lords… you bring shame upon us, Doctor.” 

“So if I’m an abomination, what does that make Emma?” Clara asked, uncowed by Rassilon’s words. “She’s the same as me. Half-human, half-Time Lord.”

“She was grown. She was not created as some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”

The Doctor snorted. “You claim humans to be stupid, yet you know enough of them to make jokes about Frankenstein? Hypocrite.”

“Your child is a weapon. She has value for that reason. You, on the other hand, hold no value to us. You are a stain on both your races; a freak that can be dissected on Earth in the name of what those savages call science, or executed on Gallifrey for bringing shame upon our people,” Rassilon sneered. “You decide.” 

“You know,” the Doctor interjected, before Clara could conceive an answer. “This is kind of why I left Gallifrey. You have no sense of adaptation, or curiosity. You don’t want to evolve; you want to stay the same. It’s backwards. It’s madness.” 

“And here I was thinking you were a coward,” Rassilon retorted with a shrug. “All that running… for what? To create a freak?” 

“I’m not a freak,” Clara said hotly. “I’m not a mutant, or a science experiment. I’m his _wife._ ” 

“Yes, we heard that unfortunate piece of news,” Rassilon made a distasteful face. “We had rather hoped it to be gossip.” 

“I’ve been married before,” the Doctor reasoned, his tone measured. “Four times.” 

“Yes,” Rassilon mused. “Let’s see: Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth the First, Marilyn Monroe, River Song. Not that you have a thing for human women. Not that you have a power complex. Although this little one… this little one is a deviation from the norm.”

“I’m not little!” Clara protested, resisting the urge to stamp her foot. 

“You are small in both stature and intellect. You are incomparable to the might of the Time Lords.” 

“Christ, are all of your lot this annoying?” Clara asked the Doctor, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I can see why you did a runner.”

“Mostly,” he confirmed, tipping her a wink. “Look, Rassilon, you seem to be forgetting that Clara is the person who convinced me not to consign you all to a permanent death. _And_ that she got me a new regeneration cycle.” 

“The first is… an act of kindness that she extolled, but she served only as an external manifestation of your own conscience. The second is something I deeply regret, and she should thus not be commended for.”

“Look, are you actually going to tell us anything useful, or are you going to just slag off my choice of wives?” the Doctor asked in exasperation. “Because frankly, if you’re not going to listen to her questions, I’ll repeat them and you can answer me, because like Clara says: we want our daughter back. And after that little torture chamber routine, we’ve reached the end of our tempers. So firstly, where are we?” 

“Isn’t this-” 

“No, Clara, it’s not Gallifrey. The atmospheric conditions are wrong. Too much oxygen. So. Where are we?” 

“Deltron-Nine. Thought you might enjoy the desert, I know how much you favoured the Drylands back home,” Rassilon explained simply. “We weren’t willing to have you back on Gallifrey. Not after all you’ve done.”

“Oh yes, saving you all from the Time War, how abundantly terrible,” the Doctor quipped. “How _inconsiderate_ of me. Why bring us here at all?”

“To condemn you in person for-” 

“I’m bored of being condemned,” the Doctor groaned, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “We’ve already had it from everyone in the universe, it seems. Ashildr. Missy. You. It’s boring now. Can’t you just congratulate us on reproducing, like normal people?”

“Congratulations on engaging in a savage, primitive deed and impregnating your pet human in a disgusting, animalistic way,” Rassilon retorted, his tone mocking. “Congratulations on creating a weapon.” 

“A child,” the Doctor corrected automatically. “She’s a child.”

“She is a _weapon_ and you know it,” Rassilon argued, his eyes beginning to blaze with anger. “You knew what you were creating. I don’t care for your motives – you created the hybrid.” 

“So _where is she_?” the Doctor demanded, determined to get answers. “I presume you weren’t stupid enough to bring her with you, so where is she?” 

“You seem to think that I would be willing to tell you. What has rendered you so delusional?” 

“Because,” Clara spat, creeping up behind Rassilon and pressing a jagged shard of rock into the side of his neck in a threatening act that the Doctor would have condemned under normal circumstances. “Because this is the part of every bad movie where the bad guy monologues about his diabolical plans, convinced the heroes are about to die.” 

“That would be because you are,” Rassilon murmured softly, twisting in Clara’s grasp and wrapping an arm around her throat as he overpowered her with ease, the other hand drawing his weapon and placing it casually against her temple. “Doctor, you really should learn when to give up.” 

“She’s our _daughter,_ ” he begged, acutely aware of the panic consuming Clara. “We just want her back. That’s all. Or to know she’s alive.” 

“Oh she’s alive,” Rassilon said with a sneer, enjoying goading the Doctor. “For now. The same cannot be said for her poor, dear family.” 

“Get off me,” Clara protested, attempting to twist in his grasp and clawing at his arm unsuccessfully. “Let me _go._ ” 

“Now, now,” he chided, pressing the barrel of his weapon against her head more. “Don’t make me kill you like I killed your poor, dear wife.” 

Clara felt the world stop around her, her field of vision narrowing to only herself and the Doctor as they locked eyes and felt the hope die in their hearts. They had been praying for a miracle, praying that River – warm, beautiful, intelligent River, able to look after herself and fight her own battles – had found a way to survive. They had been praying that somehow she had done something clever and escaped the brush of death, escaped the entanglement of the net that seemed to be closing around them increasingly tightly. And yet she hadn’t. She had fallen victim to the fury of the Time Lords.

The air rushed from Clara’s lungs as her heart thudded to a stop, a high-pitched whine filling her ears as her brain fought for oxygen that her body was unable to remember how to gain. Every cell in her body was attuned to Rassilon’s words and to extenuating a denial of what he had told them, determined to reject the notion of River’s death as a carefully-worded lie. She could not be dead. It was not possible for one so vibrant to cease to be; it was not possible for anyone to have been callous enough to take her away from them.

Somehow Clara found herself shaking her head, the barrel of the gun scraping across her skin as she did so. Blood began to trickle sluggishly down her temple, but she scarcely felt it as she looked into her husband’s eyes and watched his resolve harden into white-hot fury against the man holding her.

“No…” she choked out, stars beginning to pop at the edges of her vision as she fought to remember how to sustain her own life, and the Doctor’s expression softened for half a moment as he looked to her and murmured a simple instruction.

“Breathe.” 

Her panic and grief crystallised into a sense of self-preservation and she sucked in a lungful of air, then another, still shaking her head as Rassilon threw her to her knees in the dust and she began to hyperventilate, bowing her head and knowing with certainty what was about to happen. 

“I killed her like a dog,” Rassilon spat, enjoying watching Clara suffer. “She ran, and I killed her. Filthy half-breed that she was, she deserved it. So now it’s your turn. Disgusting mutant. You, and then your human-loving husband, and then when she’s outlived her use, that abomination of a child of yours. Beg. Go on. Beg me for your life, you worthless piece of filth.” 

“Rassilon,” the Doctor warned, taking half a step towards them with his hands held up in a pacifistic gesture, silently pleading for Clara’s life. “Rassilon, don’t do this. Please. You’ve taken everything from me, please, you can’t take Clara.”

“Did you not listen?” the Lord President snarled. “You’re next. You won’t have to live long without her. I would say that you’ll meet again in the Matrix, but we’re not letting your corrupt soul near the thing – you’d infect the very foundation of our society, wouldn’t you? And as for her… well, filth like her isn’t fit to so much as walk the surface of Gallifrey. She’ll die, and you’ll die, and you can cavort in the flames of what her backwards species call Hell.”

“Dear god, your speeches do go _on,_ don’t they dearest?” came a familiar Scottish voice, and Clara raised her head to take in the sight of Missy, stood a short distance away, limbs arranged into an artistic pose as she reapplied her lipstick. “Now, are you going to let my favourite pal and his puppy go, or am I going to have to make you?” 

“What do you want, Koschei?” Rassilon asked, narrowing his eyes at her in a silent warning. “Why are you here?” 

“Ideally to make you stop calling me that, it cramps my style,” Missy rolled her eyes. “I’m here to rescue my bezzie mate and his pet. I did just say that, pay attention.”

“But…” 

“Ah, ah, ah. Let them go.” 

“Give me _one_ good reason.” 

“Missy, make this a good one,” the Doctor implored, placing his trust in her to do the right thing. “Please?”

“Killing them now would be boring, and terribly unsporting. Let them have a bit of a run ‘round the universe first, hm? You’ve got little Emma safe and sound somewhere, so it doesn’t really matter if you let them have their fun before you summarily execute them. Besides, even if they do get back to Gallifrey, then you can kill them in self-defence. Looks a lot better that way.” 

“Are you _insane?_ ” the Doctor hissed, aghast. 

“Yes, keep up,” Missy poked her tongue out in his direction. “So how about it? I’ll take the poor grieving loves off your hands and you can scuttle off back to the planet of the ridiculous hats. Go on. Be a dearie.”

Rassilon cocked his head to one side, considering the proposal. “What’s in this for you?”

Missy shrugged. “Fun? I don’t know. I do occasionally do nice things.” 

“No you don’t,” the Doctor argued, raising an eyebrow. “Not ever.” 

“Hush pet, the Lord President is thinking.” 

“Very well,” Rassilon said after a moment’s pause, holstering his gun. “Get out of my sight. And know that this is a temporary reprieve. You will be punished for your crimes.”

Missy whooped triumphantly, turning and disappearing over a ridge as Rassilon strode back to his ship, crisis temporarily averted. The Doctor strode to Clara and crouched beside her, helping her up and linking his hands with hers as tears began to spill silently down her cheeks. 

“River…”

“I know,” he said, his voice trembling only slightly as he fought to contain his grief. “I know, Clara, I know. But right now we need to go with Missy and find somewhere safe. Then I promise you we can grieve.” 

Clara nodded numbly, allowing him to lead her across the scorched sand and through a set of concealed doors. Red light pulsed around her softly, and she closed her eyes and burrowed into the Doctor’s shoulder, too overwhelmed to face the unfamiliar TARDIS that they had put their faith in.

“Now, Doctor,” she heard Missy say from afar. “Running away was always your forte, so go on: name us a planet.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Rassilon's bombshell, Clara and the Doctor find themselves in a precarious position: consumed with grief, and travelling in the TARDIS of an insane Time Lady. As Clara's anger begins to get the better of her, will it have serious consequences?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of those chapters that went in a very unexpected direction. Clara decided she wanted to shout... and so shout she did. Enjoy.

“Surprise me,” he mumbled, wrapping his arms around Clara and guiding to her a black leather chair, sinking into it heavily and pulling her onto his lap for comfort. “Anywhere. Anywhere at all. Away from here.” 

“She’s gone,” Clara whimpered into his shoulder, shock overtaking her and her body beginning to shake in response to the news. “She’s really, really gone… I was so sure… I was praying so hard…” 

“I know,” the Doctor told her, kissing her hair and turning his face away before she could see him cry. “I know, love, I know. We wanted it, but Rassilon… Rassilon isn’t the kind of monster to leave anyone alive, or… well, or to lie about these things. Not when he can make people suffer with a very real pain, or hurt others.” 

“That’s probably not helping,” Missy noted, flicking switches and throwing her TARDIS back into the relative safety of the vortex. “She’s human, they prefer it when you lie to them about these things.”

“Missy,” he snapped, unappreciative of her interference. “I respect her enough not to lie to her about this. About him.”

“About _our people_ ,” she countered. “About what they do to people who cross them. Because that’s what’s at the crux of this, isn’t it? You’re ashamed about the fact your own people murdered your wife in cold blood.” 

“Missy,” he said again, but the anger was gone from his tone, resignation etched deep into his face. “Yes, I am,” he confessed. “But I have Clara still. I have her, and I have Emma, and so I will keep them safe from – as you so thoughtfully observed – _our_ people and what they want to do to us.” 

“You’re allowed to be upset,” Missy said pragmatically, and then shrugged at his surprised expression. “What? Like they haven’t killed people I love. Like you didn’t tell me the same thing then. Sometimes, it’s alright to grieve. Grief can hold you back from moving on.” 

“Let me guess,” he interjected, with a knowing groan. “Grief holds you back, and once you’ve grieved you can go and get violent revenge?” 

“See, you know me so well,” Missy purred. “That’s exactly it. They killed River, so you have to go and kill them.” 

“I won’t be killing anyone,” the Doctor clarified. “I don’t _do_ that. You know that.” 

“Kill them,” Clara said with sudden certainty, looking up at them both with cold eyes before getting to her feet and beginning to pace the unfamiliar console room. “You will kill them. I’ve seen you, I’ve seen your righteous anger, and if now is not the time to be righteous and angry then when is? They took her away from us, Doctor, they took our wife and they killed her like an animal. They took our daughter, and god alone knows what they’re doing to her. They’ve taken and taken from our family – you know that they'd take me from you given half the chance. You know that I’ll be the next target, you know that they would hurt me for the chance to hurt you. They’d hurt me, then they’d condemn you for your anger, and that would be that. Emma would be left alone in the universe with them, with no hope and no one to save her, and we can’t allow that to happen. We fight back. We strike back. We make sure that they don’t hurt her and we make sure that she will be safe, so now, Doctor – you will be angry. You will hurt them.” 

“Clara…” he began, thrown by the fury that blazed in her expression and the violence she was actively encouraging. “You know…”

“Doctor, I know what you would do for me. You’ve been to hell and back for me; you’ve gone against the prophecies of your people for me. So, I ask this of you now: get angry. Get angry, and let them know that. You and Missy – you could fight them. You both could. You could fight them and you could win, because one of you has the compassion they lack and one of you is too insane to worry about self-preservation, so go on, this once. For me. Team up and get her back.” 

“But…”

“Oh, here we go. Protesting like a true Time Lord. I mean, what do I know? I’m just a weak little human. Sweet little Clara, doesn’t know right from wrong, or righteous anger from unbidden fury. Well, for your information, I’m not sweet, and I’m certainly not going to sit here and cry when we could be avenging River’s death and getting our daughter back. If you want me to stand to one side while you two are clever and work to bring them down, then fine. That I can do. But when it comes to the crux of it, I will be there. I will be there to snatch her away from them and bring her back to us, because she is my daughter. She is the most important person to me in the universe, and I swore to her when I first held her in my arms that I would never let her down or let anyone hurt her. And I have. I’ve failed in my duties as a mother, and I will regret that every day for the rest of my life, but if I can save her then just maybe I can make amends in her eyes. Maybe that will be enough.” 

“Clara, you’re her mother,” the Doctor said gently, attempting to stay calm and reason with her. “She knows you love her, she won’t hold this over you.” 

“Won’t she?” Clara asked bitterly. “She won’t hold it against me that I let the monsters who are her father’s people take her away? She won’t hold it against me that I let them harm her or that I let them keep me from her? She won’t hold it against me that I let her down, and that River is dead, and that this entire thing could have been avoided if I’d just said no to going to that bloody street, if I’d not given in and said she could take a look? This entire thing is my fault, Doctor, and Christ alone knows I’ll never forgive myself, so you two are going to team up, and we’re going to get her back, or so help me I will die trying.”

“You’re no help to anyone dead,” Missy mused, rolling her eyes as she spoke. “She can’t be glad you’ve made amends if you’re dead.” 

“If we fail in this mission,” Clara told her, jaw set as she faced the pragmatics of the situation. “If we fail at getting my daughter back, if things go wrong and she doesn’t make it, then so help me, I would rather die harming those filthy monsters for touching her than live having not bothered to try.”

“She always this… sanctimonious?” Missy asked, wrinkling her nose as she addressed the Doctor. “Or is this a new development from being in close proximity to you?” 

“It’s a… ah, new development,” the Doctor muttered. “Probably my fault.” He turned his attention to Clara. “Thanks for blaming my people. Emphasis on them being _mine_.”

“Oh, please,” Clara spat. “You want to talk to me about being sanctimonious, you with your chip on your shoulder and your obsession with being the last of your kind? They _are_ your people – your people who for so long you grieved over and told me the wonders of. Your people who revealed themselves to be monsters, and you knew that all along but you chose not to tell me until it was too late. You let me think that they were some kind of heroes, let me think that _you_ were, but all this time you’ve known they were a threat to us all and you never thought it pertinent to let me know. My people aren’t perfect – god knows we’re fucking up our planet and we’ve started enough wars – but my people haven’t taken Emma. The blame for that is solely on Gallifrey. That, and the murder of our wife.” 

“Clara… you say this like it’s on my hands,” he said with stunned disbelief, unsure if he understood her correctly. “As if I were-” 

“You _are_ responsible. You’re a Time Lord, aren’t you? You went to their sodding Academy and you learned their ways; you heard their prophecies and you let them believe you were one of them. Then you ran, like the coward you are – you ran, instead of challenging their order, and instead you chose to hide away from them, leaving them festering in the universe like a disease. You did worse than that – you _saved_ them, and the worst part of that is that I helped you. I told you they were worth saving. I told you that they were your people and you had a duty, but _Jesus_ , I regret that every minute of every day. I stood by your side and out of love for you I told you to save them – and together we did. We saved them, and this is what they’ve done to us in return. They’re monsters. You all are. You’re monsters, and I wish to god I’d never had anything to do with that filthy, disgusting planet.” 

“You don’t mean any of this,” he said quietly, shaking his head in denial. “You’re in shock, and you’re grieving. This isn’t you talking.”

“Isn’t it?” she spat. “Am I not allowed to be angry? Is that your forte now? You get to be angry, while I get to scream and weep and faint? I’m tired of being second fiddle to the furious anger of the Time Lord Victorious. I’m tired of being barely a cloud to the Oncoming Storm. You have your anger, and I’ve spent so long trying to hide mine – but goddamn it, they have our _daughter._ They have our daughter and sitting here all meek and mild isn’t going to get her back, is it? No. Sitting meek and mild is going to get her killed. Now is the time to be angry. Now is the time to let it burn. You told me that once before, remember? Don’t bleat. Don’t ask _why me_. Let it hurt. Anger can be distilled into action.” 

“ _Violent_ action!” 

“So what? Violence is against your moral code, Doctor, it’s not against mine. If I die, that’s on me, that’s not on you.” 

“I have a duty of care.”

“ _I never asked you to!_ ” she argued. “I never wanted that, I wanted you to love me as an equal and not reduce me to something you have to care for!” 

“Oh, so you can only care for something if it’s inferior to you?” he snapped, feeling his temper beginning to flare in response to her anger. “So, you don’t care for me?” 

“So you assume that you’re superior to me?” Clara met his gaze and stared him down, both of them blazing white-hot with fury. “You assume that you are more than me, that I am lesser to you? I love you, yes, and I care for you, certainly, but I don't assume the ability or requirement to protect you, because you’re a rational being with the means to care for himself.”

“Clara, that wasn’t what I meant,” he sighed. “You know that, I just…”

“Shut up,” she said simply, turning her attention to Missy instead. “Can you help us, or not?” 

“And _now_ you remember I’m here. Your mistress and saviour. Yep, that’s me: the convenient heroine.”

“Yes, or no?” 

“Well, that’s a big question,” Missy paused, sucking her teeth as she considered the idea. “Much as I would like to oppose my old friend with the eyebrows – nothing personal, mind you, just a desire to see him riled – I can’t bring myself to be his enemy.” 

“What do you mean, you can’t?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously. “You like winding me up and trying to kill me. That’s your bread and butter.” 

“I’d certainly like to, yes,” Missy said. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s more like my oxygen, really; gives a Time Lady something to do. But no, not this time. This time there’s a higher purpose.”

“When have you _ever_ considered that?” 

“When there’s a little girl’s life at stake,” Missy said, with surprising gentleness. “When she reminds me of my own little girl.” 

“So you’ll help?” Clara asked eagerly, seizing the possibility of hope. “You’ll help us find her?” 

“Well, I think the ‘us’ might be optimistic,” Missy arched an eyebrow delicately. “After all your little diatribes, he might not be quite as willing.”

“I’m _not_ quite as willing,” he said darkly, scowling at them both. “Not because of her. She didn’t mean what she said.” 

“I did.” 

“No, you didn’t,” he turned his attention to Missy, refusing to be drawn into an argument with Clara. “You’re not _nice_. You don’t help people out for the fun of it. You don’t do things like that. So, go on. What’s the real deal going on here? What’s your ulterior motive?”

“No ulterior motive,” she said, shrugging with a practiced ease as she stared him down. “I just want to help you.” 

“You can’t have Emma.” 

“I don’t want her.” 

“So why are you doing this?” 

“To help out a friend so he doesn’t have to see his child die in the same way mine did.” 

“Which was?” Clara asked, but found herself ignored. 

“You don’t do nice, and you don’t do altruistic, so stop pretending you do. What’s really going on here?” 

“Nothing is really going on!” Missy cried, flinging her hands in the air as she spoke. “I want to help you, but clearly you don’t trust me.” 

“No, I don’t,” the Doctor spat, eyeing her warily. “You’ll just take Emma for your own, or try to kill us both.” 

“That’s just rude,” Missy’s eyes narrowed, and she flicked a switch on the console. “You know what happens to rude people?” 

The TARDIS doors opened onto a harsh, rocky planet, and both Clara and the Doctor found themselves dragged outside by an invisible hand, before being deposited unceremoniously on the uneven ground. 

“That’s unfair,” the Doctor protested, trying to take a step back towards the time machine but finding himself impeded. “You can’t activate the Hostile Persons Displacement System on us!” 

“Can’t I?” Missy asked sweetly, from the doors of her TARDIS, the picture of smugness. “It looks like I just did. Seeing as you don’t want my help, I’ll have to find someone who does. Do enjoy yourselves, dears.”

She snapped her fingers, the doors closed, and in a matter of seconds the TARDIS had dematerialised, leaving them alone in the wilderness.

“Great,” Clara said sourly. “Now what?”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being abandoned in the back of beyond by Missy, the Doctor and Clara have to come up with two plans. The first: how to get home. The second, and more crucial: how to get their daughter back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're all enjoying this! Some familiar faces may be about to appear...

“Now we do something clever, I guess,” the Doctor hypothesised, taking in their surroundings in a concerted effort to avoid looking at Clara. “No idea what. Got any ideas, or are you too busy hating me and losing your temper to contribute anything productive to our current predicament?”

“I don’t hate you,” Clara sighed, already regretting her outburst in Missy’s TARDIS. “I was…” 

“Angry. Emotional. You made a mistake. I get it. Spare me the details.”

“I meant what I said,” Clara insisted stubbornly. “About-” 

“Great, so you _do_ hate me and my people. Brilliant. Nice to know how well our marriage is going, isn’t it?” 

“Our marriage clearly isn’t doing well based on the fact that one of us is dead, and our daughter is missing,” Clara snapped, her temper fraying again in the face of his sarcasm. “So you know, no idea why I’d be in a bad mood. No idea why I’d be suffering. None at all. I should be skipping around with joy, by all accounts.” 

“Clara,” he took half a step closer to her, his expression softening as he realised the magnitude of what they’d been through. “I know you’re upset. I know you’re hurting. I’m hurting too and I’m not-” 

“Spare me another one of your bloody sanctimonious talks, yeah?” she asked, feeling tears burn at her eyes as she turned away from him, determined not to let him see her cry. “I can’t be dealing with you up on a high horse when we’re already up shit creek with no paddle.” 

“Clara,” he said again, more gently, and he stepped in front of her, taking her hands in his. “Clara, I love you, and I deserved almost everything you shouted at me. I _know_ my people are monsters, and I _know_ this is mostly my fault for not warning you about… things. So, I know that you have every right to be angry, and to hurt. I never meant for any of this, and I never wanted to upset you in any way. You and Emma are all I really have left, and that kills me. It kills me to see either of you suffering, in any way.” 

“You have Missy.” 

“Missy: the insane, psychopathic Time Lady who keeps trying to kill me,” he rolled his eyes at her assertion. “Lucky me.” 

“But she’s-” 

“One of my people. Yes, I know. One of my people, who as you helpfully pointed out were basically a giant bunch of arseholes, hell-bent on destroying us and most of the universe. Not exactly a reassuring point to make, if I’m honest.” 

“I’m sorry,” Clara said in a small voice, guilt consuming her as she realised how deeply her words had wounded him, regardless of their veracity. “I’m sorry I lost my temper and I’m sorry I said all those things. I’m not going to try and justify any of it because it was completely unfounded and wrong of me. I don’t blame you for any of this, not even slightly, but I _do_ love you, and I want to be with you, and I don’t care that your people are mildly genocidal maniacs, I just want us to be us again. To be a family, like we used to be. Can we do that?” 

“Oh, Clara Oswald,” the Doctor huffed fondly, raising one hand to cup her cheek. “You’re spirited. You always have been. You think I can’t handle a little outburst of temper from my Impossible Girl?” 

“’Spirited’ is a nice way of saying ‘moody’, isn’t it? Don’t even try to lie to me.”

“Maybe just a little, yeah,” he grinned, before his expression grew sombre. “You miss her. You miss River, and finding out that way… finding out that she’s… well, it was a shock. I know that. Grief does funny things to people. Hence the yelling. Hence the outburst.”

“ _You’re_ not yelling at anyone.” 

“Yet,” his mouth curled up into a smile that she reciprocated shyly. “We need to get off this planet, I think. We need to get you home, and we need to think about what we do from there. Whether that be grieving or whether that be taking action.” 

“Look…” Clara scuffed her toe across the ground as she contemplated his words. “I’m sorry, OK? I’m really sorry.” 

“Clara,” he told her, kissing her forehead before continuing. “You don’t need to be. You really don’t. You reacted normally to the whole affair – albeit rather loudly. Your response was logical; it was mine that wasn’t. I should have pretended to work with Missy, I should have tried to get us back home… because now we’re god knows where.” 

“Liar. You always know where we are, it’s a special skill.”

“OK, I do,” he admitted with an easy shrug. “Just it’s the back of beyond. Doesn’t even have a name designated to it, it’s just A09543. It’s directly underneath a galactic highway, so it’s not the ideal choice for most settlers. They all want somewhere peaceful.” 

“Galactic highway?” Clara repeated, an idea forming in her mind. “As in, up there, there’s spaceships?”

“Yes, Clara,” he reiterated. “Lots and lots of them,” he caught sight of her expression, and realisation dawned as to what she was hinting at. “ _Oh._ ”

“Yes, oh,” she concurred with a wry smile. “So, how do we get out of here?” 

“Do you have a phone on you?” he asked, and she patted down her pockets until she located it, handing it over to him unwillingly. He and phones had a poor track record. “Good. I knew one day that technology dependency would pay off.” 

“Rude.” 

“Not rude, honest,” he argued, taking the sonic from his jacket pocket and scanning the phone, jabbing the rear casing with resolute determination. “You know, this would be a lot easier if Apple didn’t insist on sealing their phones shut. I need to just – _got it_.” 

“Got what?” Clara asked, but he was no longer listening, intent instead on the phone before him and whatever he had succeeded in making it do. 

“Hello,” he said brightly, and Clara circled around him, discovering the front camera had been activated and that he was recording himself talking. “My name is – well, that’s not important, but I’m stuck on A09543 with my wife. She’s very unwell. Aren’t you?” 

“Oh,” Clara said, taking the hint and trying to look appropriately ill. “Urm, yeah. Really, really… unwell.” 

“We could use a lift back to where we came from, so if anyone is heading in the general direction of Earth, that would be fantastically helpful. Our coordinates are being broadcast alongside this message, so if anyone could assist us, that would be much appreciated.” 

He ended the recording and pressed a few buttons onscreen, grinning at Clara when he was finished. 

“What was that?” Clara asked, as a shuttle appeared in the sky above them and began to descend. 

“That,” the Doctor said happily. “Is our passage out of here.”

 

* * *

 

Clara curled up on the sofa of her old flat, trying to ignore the layer of dust that had settled over everything in sight. The Doctor paced before her, hands clasped behind his back as he pondered the problem at hand, occasionally stopping to make notes on the pad of paper she’d found under her coffee table and placed before him.

“Right,” he said with an unfelt confidence after a long moment’s silence. “So, we need help. That much is clear. We can’t do this alone.” 

“Why?” she asked in bafflement, scandalised by his suggestion. “We save the day, it’s what we do. When have we ever asked for help? That’s for amateurs, and nothing about _me_ is amateur. Thanks.” 

“Do you have any form of space or time travel?” 

“We have the TARDIS.”

“She doesn’t count, she’s too obvious. I reiterate my previous question.” 

“Urm,” Clara said, chewing her lip. “No?” 

“Right. So, that’s problem one. Next: do you have any weapons?” 

“No, but you hate them anyway, so it’s not a great loss.” 

“Yes I do, but as you so saliently pointed out to Missy, you don’t. Still, that’s problem two. Finally: do you have any experience of planning enormous incursions onto other planets and/or alien races?” 

“No, but a Zygon once possessed me and left me with her blueprint of how to do it, does that count?” 

“No,” the Doctor said shortly. “So basically, between the two of us, I’ve got a vague idea of these things, and you have none at all.” 

“ _Some._ I have _some_.” 

“It doesn’t count,” he repeated more emphatically, ignoring her scowl. “So we need help. From actual professionals. Who yes, OK, may have guns, but we can make a deal about that. You can maybe have a very small gun. If you ask nicely.” 

“So, you want us to call UNIT?” 

“Precisely,” he concurred, looking pleased that she had grasped the idea. “UNIT: massively mighty global organisation, lots of tech and experience. Exactly what we need.”

“Do _they_ have space-time travel?” Clara asked, furrowing her brow as she cast her mind back. “I don’t recall them having anything, except that vortex manipulator I used and you then _lovingly broke._ ” 

“Ah,” the Doctor began, realising the flaw in his plan. “Well, that’s an-” 

“Also, gun-wise, they don’t have anything Time-Lord-worthy. They have ground-to-air missiles, and bombs, but neither of those is going to work against a civilisation that is infinitely older than ours, is it? Not unless Rassilon’s got a presidential plane, which I very much doubt.” 

“They’ve got the Osterhagen Key,” the Doctor rationalised. “That’s-” 

“Doctor,” Clara shot him a withering look. “You cannot use nuclear warheads under the Earth’s crust to destroy Gallifrey. Because a) that involves blowing up my planet to also blow up yours, and b) Emma isn’t exactly immune to radiation. That’s a terrible idea, move on.” 

“So you’re saying we _shouldn’t_ call UNIT?” the Doctor scowled. “What alternative is there?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Clara mused, deciding to push his buttons: “There’s that attractive American soldier who lives in Cardiff Bay.”

“Do you mean Jack?” he asked, his frown intensifying. “Because he doesn’t live _in_ the Bay, it’d be wet. Also, he’s not attractive. Decidedly average-looking at best.” 

“Jealous?” 

“No,” he muttered, but his expression suggested otherwise. “Not at all.”

“Do you have any better ideas than calling Torchwood?” 

“They don’t have any space-time travel either!”

“That’s what they _keep_ telling you, and somehow you believe them every single time. You’re like an innocent little child, you’d believe anything you were told. It’s actually quite sweet. Let’s go see them.” 

The Doctor went red and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _just because you fancy Jack._  

“Fuck off,” Clara said without malice. “I don’t do American, or anywhere near that flirty. I like dishevelled and irate Scottish Time Lords. Stop being jealous and admit I’m right for once.” 

“But if I do that, you’ll be insufferable.”

“When am I _not_ insufferable?” she winked. “Go on. Humour me.”

“Fine,” he conceded, and she grinned in triumph. “We can call them.” 

“Why only call?!” she pouted. “Come on, this isn’t even a jealousy thing. Phones are unsecured, it’s dangerous.”

“Your phone is secured,” he reminded her pointedly. “UNIT sorted it, remember? The paperwork was a nightmare, especially when they had to get back all those drunk selfies. Besides, the TARDIS is recharging.” 

“ _Recharging_?” Clara asked with incredulity. “Bollocks.”

“She is!” he complained. “We did get tortured, you know. She’s mentally linked to me, so she’s taken the brunt of things.” 

“This sounds suspiciously like a lie.” 

“Shut up. You won’t be saying that when your bedroom vanishes.” 

“I hate you,” Clara groused, but she took out her phone anyway, flicking through the numbers until she found Jack’s. “Let me do the talking, you’ll only get grouchy and blokey and jealous and end up insulting him.” 

“I will not!”

“You’ve insulted pretty much everyone we’ve ever met. Including my family.” 

“Just call him, will you?”

“Fine!” Clara pressed the option onscreen and listened to it ringing tinnily, putting it on speaker and setting it down on the coffee table for ease of access.

“Well, hello Miss Oswald,” came Jack’s dulcet tones. “I was wondering if you’d ever call, and now all my doubts have been assuaged. To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“Well,” she began, trying not to go pink. “We’ve sort of got a problem.” 

“In the bedroom?” Jack asked, and Clara could all but hear the wink she was certain he was giving. “I can help with that.” 

“No,” she assured him, ignoring the Doctor’s black look and focusing on the matter at hand. “Not like that. It’s Emma.” 

“How is the little tyke?” 

“Gone,” she said, the words catching in her throat, and she swiped at her eyes before carrying on: “She’s been taken and we… we need your help to get her back.” 

“Taken?” Jack repeated, his tone confused. “Taken by who? We can definitely help, but I mean… what are we up against?” 

“That’s the thing…” Clara’s voice was little more than a whisper as she realised she would have to break the news to him. “It’s…” 

“It’s the Time Lords,” the Doctor said pragmatically. “My people.”

There was silence from the other end of the phone. 

“Jack?” Clara asked, her tone fearful. “Hello?” 

“You want us to go up against the might of the Time Lords?” 

“Urm,” Clara cleared her throat, hating how it sounded when Jack said it. “Yeah.” 

“Well,” Jack let out a low whistle of surprise. “Sounds like a death mission.” 

“Almost certainly.” 

“Well,” he said again, then sighed. “I guess you’d best count us in then.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara pay a visit to Cardiff to discuss strategy with Torchwood, but the Doctor's jealousy threatens to throw a spanner into the works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't originally going to write a chapter detailing Clara & Twelve going to see Torchwood, but then so many of your comments said how much you were looking forward to seeing Jack and I realised I couldn't possibly deprive you of that. So here you go!

Clara squinted against the wind, looking across Roald Dahl Plass to where Jack was approaching them at a jog, before side-eyeing her husband with a wary expression. “Be good,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, keeping her face carefully neutral as she spoke. “OK? Really, be good.” 

“I’m always good,” the Doctor bristled, indignant at the very suggestion. “I’m the best.” 

“No you’re not. Behave, OK? Please? We need his help, and pissing him off isn’t going to secure that.” 

“Well, he’s the one who insists on flirting with you at every opportunity.” 

Jack reached them before Clara could argue back, already beaming from ear to ear at the duo. “Can I help flirting with her?” he asked, tipping Clara a wink that caused her to turn a delicate shade of pink. “Such a pretty young woman.”

“Not that young,” she countered, as he dipped to press his lips to her hand and she giggled like a schoolgirl. “Besides, eavesdropping.” 

“It’s not eavesdropping when the wind is blowing the words of an angel into my ear.” 

“And if she’s an angel, what am I?” the Doctor growled, evidently already irked by the former Time Agent’s behaviour. “Hmm?” 

“An avenging angel,” Jack concurred with an easy grin, pulling the Time Lord into an uneasy embrace and slapping him on the back in a way that would’ve caused lesser men to quail in pain and intimidation. “I’d say a guardian angel, but I’ve seen this woman’s UNIT file and damn, I’m not messing with anyone who can do taekwondo. Although I will say that such a sport is wasted on you, Ms Oswald. All those unflattering white outfits? Such a crime when you’ve got a figure that’s as knockout as yours.” 

Clara turned a darker shade of pink, casting her eyes down a little to avoid Jack’s foppish smile. “Behave,” she said weakly, unaccustomed to such overt flirting. “Or…” 

“Or what?” Jack asked innocently. “Will the teacher have to punish me?” 

“Jack,” the Doctor snapped, and Clara caught the expression on his face and fell abruptly silent as the colour faded from her cheeks. “We are here for a reason. Take us into the damn Hub and let’s talk about things sensibly.”

“Sensibleness is overrated,” Jack groused, but he handed them both a pass and led them over to the appropriate paving slab in terse silence, Clara following the two men warily. “But fine.” 

The Doctor reached for Clara’s hand as they were phased through the concrete, but she pulled away from him sharply as they found themselves within the bunker, taking a step back and circling the room to place a table between herself and the Time Lord as she tried to regain a sense of composure. 

“So,” she began, approaching a nearby whiteboard and seizing a pen, adopting a power stance and gesturing grandly to the blank board. “Plans.”

“Easy, Clara,” Jack said, holding up a hand to stop her before she could launch into a nervous diatribe. “I wouldn’t be much of a host if I didn’t offer either of you a drink. Tea?”

“Please,” she said with a wavering smile. “And he’ll-” 

“Damn well speak for himself, thanks,” the Doctor muttered, shooting her a dark look from under his eyebrows. “Skip the tea for me.”

“Well, one cup of tea for the lady, coming up,” Jack said with easy charm. “Be right back.” He ducked through an archway and vanished from sight, and Clara met the Doctor’s ferocious scowl with an equally black look of her own. 

“What the hell is your problem?” she asked in a bitter tone. “Why are you being like this?” 

“I’m not being like anything,” the Doctor muttered, in a passable yet unconscious imitation of many of the teenage students Clara had once taught. “So knock it off.” 

“No, _you_ knock it off. What the hell is it? Don’t try lying to me, because I can see right through you, and don’t even think about sulking when we get back to the TARDIS and then moping for the next six weeks, because we’ve got more important things to think about right now than your ego.” 

“Yes, we have got more important things to think about,” he concurred in a quiet voice, which somehow only served to frighten her all the more. “Like our missing daughter.”

“I know,” she assured him nervously, attempting to defuse the situation. “I do recall that.” 

“Do you?” he asked, looking down at his hands as he chose his next words. “I thought you might have forgotten.” 

“Why?” she asked, not understanding his point. “How could I have forgotten?” 

“You seem…” he looked up at her, meeting her gaze as he spoke. “You seem to forget yourself, sometimes.” 

“ _Forget_ myself?” she asked, her eyes narrowing dangerously as he flinched from her expression. “This isn’t Regency England, Doctor, or Victorian London. I’m not awaiting a suitor or acting out of turn, so what the hell are you talking about?”

“You forget what we have lost.” 

“You think I forget about our daughter?” she asked, her tone incredulous as she gaped at her husband. “You think I forget about River? You think there’s a second that I don’t think about them, that my heart doesn’t ache for them both or for what we had?” 

“It seems it.” 

“Like hell does it!” 

“You’re flirting with other people!” he snarled, his jealousy getting the better of him. “You flirt and you laugh and you toss your hair and you act like nothing is the goddamn matter! Loss is consuming me, it’s bloody consuming me from the inside out, and yet you don’t seem to care at all. You don’t seem to love me, even. It’s like I’m not here for you – like I’m only a means to an end.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears in shocked response to the accusation. “How could you say that? I’ve had thirty seconds of joking with Jack – a _friend_ – and suddenly I don’t love you anymore? What, so when he brings my tea, will that be me filing for divorce?” 

“I don’t know!” the Doctor turned away from her, and she sighed in frustration. “Yes. No.” 

“You’re an idiot,” she snapped, eyes blazing. “You’re an idiot, and an insensitive one at that. God, for a clever man you can be stupid, you know that?” 

“I…”

“Shut up, let me finish. I love you, OK? I will always goddamn love you, I thought I made that very clear several years ago, when I died for you and then married you and had your child. I’ve shown you my mind and you’ve shown me yours and we concluded – or so I thought – that we love each other, and that that love was the basis of everything we had. That love made us a happy family for Emma to be in, and god, you have no idea, do you? You have no idea how much I miss her. How much my arms ache, or my heart aches, or how much the space inside me she once filled aches. Every second. Every _single_ second. And every single second, I have River weighing on my conscience too. I’ve lost as much as you have, so don’t you dare try to paint me as experiencing some kind of levity because of my humanity. You think you feel so much more deeply than me because you’re superior in some way, but when a heart breaks, it breaks in two no matter the species.”

“Clara-”

“Shut up. I don’t let it consume me, because you know my past, Doctor. You’ve seen parts of it from your little scenic tour around my life and my mind, and you know what I can become if I let sadness consume me and refuse to see the light. If I act with goddamn levity sometimes – if I laugh or flirt or even, god forbid, smile – it’s because I’m trying not to let anything dark consume me. Yes, I flirted with Jack. But it doesn’t mean I love him. It doesn’t mean I don’t love _you_. It means that sometimes I need to see people who aren’t you. Sometimes I need to converse with other people and do normal human things like flirting, because I will _lose my damn mind_ if I don’t.” 

“I-” 

“What? Go on, accuse me of something else,” Clara began to cry silently, tears tracking down her cheeks as she raised her chin in defiance. “Go on!”

“Clara, I’m sorry,” he murmured, crossing the room to her and embracing her, the tension melting from her shoulders at his touch. “I’m a jealous idiot, and I’m sorry.”

“You are, yeah,” she concurred, sniffing as she spoke. “But it’s OK.” 

“Is it?” Jack asked, and they noticed him leaning in the doorway, a mug of tea held in one hand and an expression of surprising tenderness on his face. “Clara, it’s OK to be upset.” 

“I know,” she told him, leaning into her husband’s arms and drying her eyes with her sleeve. “I’ll be alright. We just… we need your help, please.” 

“I’ll help you, of course I will,” he said at once. “Your little one is in danger, and frankly we’re going to be much more help than UNIT would be.”

“I know,” the Doctor said, one of his hands coming up to stroke Clara’s hair absentmindedly. “I know, thank you.”

“But there’s a condition to my help, so hear me out here: I’m not coming aboard that TARDIS with you.” 

“Why?” Clara asked at once, her brow furrowing at the curious demand. “We need you with us.”

“There’s a couple of reasons. First off, my entire team would have to come, but given that two of them are working mothers, that’d mean bringing along a couple of kids, and somehow I don’t think you guys would find that conducive or easy to handle right now.” 

“Fair enough,” the Doctor said with an easy shrug. “That I can understand.”

“Right. Which brings me to the second one, and it’s simple: I don’t wanna invoke the wrath of the Scottish Time Lord,” he turned his attention to Clara. “Ma’am, you’re stunning, but I don’t want to get on his bad side by telling you that little and often.” 

“You wouldn’t…” 

“You’ve seen how he responds,” Jack smiled tiredly. “I respect you both too much to swing in and cause havoc by flirting.” 

“You could just not flirt.” 

“Flirting is like breathing for me,” Jack winked at her as he continued. “I can’t not do it. So, I’ll be staying here in rainy old Cardiff with the team, OK? I’m not gonna die because of the green-eyed monster. Well. In my case, not-die, but the point stands. I don’t wanna find out how he could kill me increasingly creatively.”

“Fair point,” Clara conceded. “So we can work with you from here, that’s fine.” 

“Question,” Jack paused theatrically, handing Clara her mug of tea. “How does River fit into things? I mean, he doesn’t like _me_ flirting with you, and your wife is probably just as much of a flirt as I am, so how does that work out with you guys?” 

“It, ah…” Clara paused, unsure how to break the news to Jack and unwilling infringe on his ebullient mood. “It doesn’t. Not anymore.” 

“What do you mean? Did you guys break up?” 

“No, she…” Clara fell silent, unable to say the words aloud and make the situation more real. 

“She died,” the Doctor said quietly, and Clara shot him a look of gratitude. “She was executed by my people for the crime of being my wife.” 

“Shit,” Jack mumbled, his bravado and machismo dissipating in an instant. “I’m so sorry, Doc, Clara. I didn’t… shit.”

Clara blinked back tears, touched by his grief. “Thanks,” she told him with sincerity. “It was… it was a shock.” 

“What happened? I mean, how did the Time Lords find her? She didn’t seem the type to go down quietly.” 

“When we lost Emma, River fought back. Clara and I got our memories wiped, but River ran. By the time we’d got each other and the necessary memories back and gone after her, the Time Lords had tracked her down and… taken action.” 

“Shit,” Jack said again, before stepping forward and folding the Doctor into his arms in a surprisingly tender gesture. “I’m sorry.” 

There was silence for a few minutes, broken only by the irregular, rasping sobs of the Doctor into Jack’s chest. Clara watched the two men for a few seconds, lost in their embrace of solidarity, before she turned back to the whiteboard, where she wrote _Emma_ in large red letters to distract herself from her own sense of loss.

“Right,” she said, as the Doctor’s sobs lessened in volume and frequency. “We need to make a plan.”

“Clara, the man’s crying!” Jack protested, but the Doctor cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“I need a distraction,” he shrugged as she spoke, looking to Clara with wide, trusting eyes, offering her silent encouragement. “Clara? Floor’s yours.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashildr makes an unlikely ally, and an uncomfortable business deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the shortness of this one... some of the next chapter was originally included, but it didn't fit well so I readjusted.

Missy entered the coffee shop and looking around herself with disdain, eyeing up the patterned armchairs before spotting her quarry and sinking into a seat opposite them with a scowl, her nose wrinkling as she appraised the situation. “ _This_ is your idea of a secure rendezvous?” 

“No, this is my idea of a coffee shop.” 

“I’m starting to think that all that immortality has scrambled your brain. I mean, I know they didn’t have Starbucks in the Viking era, but this isn’t exactly the top of my list of places to meet to discuss a kidnap attempt. Nobody needs a caramel macchiato this badly, dear. Not to mention…” Missy arched one eyebrow in a silent challenge. “Too many alive humans for my liking. Can I do something about that?”

“Sure,” Ashildr retorted with a roll of her eyes. “What a _great_ way to attract UNIT’s attention. Really subtle.” 

“It’s the twenty-second century, pet. I’m sure that lovely little Kate Stewart has finally snuffed it by now, and I do seem to recall that her son had no interest in carrying on the family tradition, so we really needn’t worry about them interfering in our business. Not today, anyway.” 

“They’ve perfected the Osterhagen Key,” Ashildr imparted. “Just so you know.” 

“Well, I’ve got a radiation-proof escape pod, so really, I’m not all that concerned about them nuking your backward little planet.”

“I might get vaporised though, and then I can’t help you.”

“You make a salient point,” Missy concurred unwillingly, hating the admission. “What exactly did you want to propose to me, anyway? Marriage? I do so hope it’s marriage, it’s been an age since I had a live-in pet.” 

“Do you not want a coffee?” Ashildr asked, frowning at her companion and then looking across to the counter. “That is the general norm for Starbucks. Ordering coffee.” 

“I’m the queen of evil. I don’t need caffeine to transform into a hyper-efficient killing machine.”

“There will be _no_ killing,” Ashildr reiterated, determined to stress her point. “So stop looking like that, and stop sizing up that bloke at the next table.” 

“But he’d make such a _delicious_ squishy noise if I shot him.”

“Missy,” Ashildr said sharply, pushing her own half-empty mug of coffee aside. “We’re here to talk business.”

“Yes, we are,” Missy agreed. “If only you’d stop being so human and trying to be _pleasant,_ we could do so. Honestly, you humans and small talk. It’s a wonder you ever get anything done, you know. You’re not as mouthy as his pet one, I’ll give you that though. One small advantage. _Small_ being the operative word, you’re smaller than she is.”

“Whose-” 

“The puppy.”

“What puppy?” 

Missy sighed in exasperation. “Clara Oswald. About five foot nothing, round, inflatable eyes the size of tennis balls. Got some serious narcissism and egomania going on, but a cracking pair of-”

“Missy.” 

“Birthed the small being that everyone is tearing their hair out over. _Her_. You know the one. She’s got a mouth on her. I’m itching to gag her one of these days. Maybe when this whole business is over and done with I could ask to borrow her.” 

“Missy,” Ashildr said again, and the Time Lady smirked at her maddeningly. “I get your point. You want to do business? Here’s my proposal: you help me find Emma, help me find the highest bidder to sell her to, and then you get to enjoy fifty percent of the profits.”

“I don’t really _do_ money,” Missy mused, mulling over the proposal. “It’s not really my style. I’d much prefer parts for weapons, or pretty things. Or both. Pretty guns. There’s a niche in the market I could exploit: killing people in style.” 

“It doesn’t have to be money,” Ashildr acquiesced with a small shrug. “The highest bidder may offer something far better. The point is, you help me find the kid, and we turn a tidy profit. Just business, you understand. What do you say?” 

“I don’t know,” Missy chewed her lip as she contemplated. “Seems an awful lot like people trafficking.” 

“The good thing about that is that it’s only illegal if you get caught.” 

“Oh, it’s not the legality I’m worried about,” Missy admitted, detesting how out of character she sounded. “More the morality of kidnapping a child and selling her on to the highest bidder… to do _what_?” 

“Use as a weapon, as she was intended to be used.” 

“She was intended to be a child,” Missy corrected, holding up one hand to silence Ashildr’s protestations. “I’m not entirely sure that when my dear old friend decided to procreate he thought ‘gosh, if I stick my dick in this human I’ll get a lovely weapon.’” 

“That was _not_ an image I wanted,” Ashildr shuddered, taking a sip of the remains of her coffee before continuing. “She was intended to be a child, certainly, but his morals were unclear. He may have used her as a weapon at a later date.” 

“You really underestimate him, you know that?” Missy raised her eyebrows. “He’s annoying, sure, and he’s got a hero complex the size of Kasterborous, but he’s a surprisingly moral bloke. It’s sickening, really, but there you go.” 

“He saved my life and rendered me immortal but with a finite memory span, thus effectively rendering me at a tremendous disadvantage to other immortals, but you know, fuck the consequences of time and other inconsequentialities.” 

“But-” 

“He almost committed mass genocide of his own people, children included.” 

“ _Almost_ being the key word here, and it was to end the Time War!” 

“He’s destroyed entire planets and species.”

“ _By accident!_ ” 

“Missy, the point is-”

“The point is, he has this external conscience called Clara Oswald, who stops him doing truly idiotic things. But her child was taken from her by – oh wait, you, to give to his people to use as a weapon. And now she’s pissed off, and a pissed off puppy is not a puppy who can make rational decisions. So, his conscience may be slightly unwilling to help with such matters. If he’s pissed off, and if she’s pissed off, it’s because you’ve caused that. Undoubtedly they would’ve been content with their _child_ if you’d let them be, but no, you had to go and interfere…”

“So this is _my_ fault?”

“Something like that,” Missy agreed, glad Ashildr was grasping the point. “You kicked the hornets’ nest and caused a huge amount of shit for yourself, well done. Not to mention the fact you created your own problem here.”

“It almost sounds like you don’t want to be involved,” Ashildr examined her nails pointedly. “Like you don’t want to help me. And if you don’t, I’m sure there’s some other Time Lords who might be interested. Ones with slightly less qualms about injuring Emma should push come to shove.” 

“Such as?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. Ushas. Mortimus.” 

Missy’s eyes hardened as she surveyed Ashildr with a look of contempt, her mouth twisting into a silent snarl. “You use their names as if you have the right to do so.” 

“I do have the right, Koschei.” 

Missy leaned across the table, a threatening smile on her face as she stared Ashildr down. “If you ever say that again then I will kill you where you stand. It will be prolonged. You will scream in agony. That chip in your head will not save you. You are _nothing_ compared to the might of my people. You will use our _titles,_ human.”

“Very well,” Ashildr leaned back in her seat and affixed Missy with a long look. “If you, Mistress, do not wish to help, I’m entirely certain that the Rani or the Monk could be convinced to – what’s funny?”

Missy was snickering with mirth at Ashildr’s ignorance, enjoying watching the girl’s exasperation. “The Monk? Please, do your research. He’s selfish and he’s troublesome, but he’s not the type to harm a child. Mortimus was always a damned fool when it came to sentiment. The Rani… well, you’d have to find her first.”

“Oh, I did.” 

“ _What?!_ ” 

“She wasn’t overly happy with you, you know,” Ashildr smirked, grateful to have the upper hand once more. “All that dashing around pretending to be her after you first regenerated. Such ridiculousness… it’s been a stain on her reputation.” 

“And she bitched about me to you… why?”

“It’s amazing what hypervodka will do.”

“I hate you,” Missy muttered, loathing being at a disadvantage. “She’s a scientist. She’s not going to be one for experimenting on… OK, who am I kidding? Yes she is. Just stop shit-stirring among the Deca, you have no right to interfere with my people. Especially those ones. We were the only ones who were any fun, so stop trying to set us against each other.”

“I will if you help me.”

“I have mentioned I hate you, right?”

“Yup.”

“Fine, I’ll help you. But I’m not happy about this.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Gallifrey, Rassilon reveals his plans for the Hybrid - but meets opposition from powerful enemies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we get to see little Emma in real-time! I'm still so in love with her and writing her.

“I’m bored.”

“Child,” Ohila pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache beginning to develop. “Child, that is one of the fundamental texts that the children of Gallifrey must read. It details-”

“But I’ve already read it,” Emma slid it off her lap and onto the floor, folding her arms and affixing Ohila with a sulky look. “ _And_ dad let me try out the principles, which you keep saying I can’t do, and I’m _bored_.” 

“You know why you can’t try those things.”

“Is it because you’ve kidnapped me and you’re holding me prisoner, and if you let me play with time fissures then I might abscond back to my family?” Emma asked sweetly, beaming up at Ohila with a practiced look of innocence that she had learned from her mother. “Am I on the right track?”

“You speak with an impudence above your years.” 

“Is that a nice way of saying I’m gobby?” Emma smirked, enjoying winding up her custodian. “Dad says that all the time; says I’m like my mum in almost every respect. She swears more though.” 

“Yes,” Ohila sighed in resignation. “Nevertheless, you have treated us to some truly impressive curse words. I wasn’t aware that you could still swear in High Gallifreyan, but trust your father to recall it… and teach you.”

Emma muttered an example under her breath, and Ohila flinched. 

“Child, such _language,_ ” she chided, trying to exert some control over the youngster. “I know you miss your parents-”

“I was kidnapped,” Emma reminded her patiently. “Stop making it sound like I’m on an adventure holiday. Being stuck on this planet with you is not my idea of a fun time. Also, my dad totally exaggerated how great his planet was. It’s _boring._ It’s all dust and rocks and sand and tents.”

“The Citadel is most beautiful,” Ohila informed her, unsure of why she was defending a planet that was not her own. “And Arcadia is a true feat of architectural beauty.” 

“Yeah, I mean, dad mentioned that but _I’m not allowed to visit them._ I’m stuck in a tent with you instead.”

“Child-”

“He was right, you know,” Emma looked up at the old woman with defiance, her jaw set as she spoke. “He was right about his people, and your people. He told me that they had both once been great but they had been jaded by war, greed and hatred. He was right, wasn’t he? Rassilon wants the power I can give him so that he can start a war against the people he hates. Ding, ding, ding. Full house of being an arsehole.” 

“You would do well not to speak of him in such a way.” 

“I don’t give a shit,” Emma said hotly, feeling her temper flare in the face of Ohila’s forced composure. “He can read my damn mind; he can know what I think of him, I don’t care. I will _never_ do his bidding. Even if I knew what I was supposed to be able to do, I wouldn’t do it for him. He doesn’t deserve my respect. Those who steal children with cheap magic tricks are not those who inspire confidence in me.”

“Gods have mercy on us, you are your father’s daughter through and through.”

“Piss off.” 

“My mistake, there’s the human in you coming out.”

“You say that as though it’s a bad thing,” Emma spat, incensed by the insult. “It is not. It gives me the compassion my father’s people lack.”

“It gives you a temper you have not yet learned to control. Which is in fact very much like your father. I am beginning to understand why they see you as a weapon.”

“I’m beginning to lose my temper at you insulting me just because of who I am,” Emma snapped. “I’ve done nothing wrong, and yet I’m stuck here to wait to be used and exploited by a people I can’t stand.” 

“She really _is_ her father’s daughter,” came a new voice, and Rassilon stepped into the half-darkness of the tent, a cruel smirk on his face. “Forgive my intrusion. I enjoyed your comment about such matters, particularly the veracity of the statement. She’s a fiery thing. The human in her is a nice counter to our biology. Makes for such a potent combination – quite the little warhead.” 

“Oh good, monologuing,” Emma rolled her eyes. “What do you want? This better involve sending me home.”

“Oh, child,” he began. “We could not do that. You are much too dangerous to be allowed to remain existing unchecked. And as you said, you refuse to acquiesce to our will. Your father raised you far too defiant for our liking. We have the means of making you comply, but they aren’t certain in their outcomes. Thus, the Council-” 

Ohila muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “no, _you._ ” 

“-have decided that the most prudent course of action – moving forward – is to terminate your existence.” 

“Oh, good,” Emma said drily, unimpressed by his words. “Like no one has threatened me with that before.”

“We do not jest.”

“Talk is cheap,” Emma faked a yawn, enjoying Rassilon’s look of fury. “You’ve ‘killed’ me before, remember? And that didn’t work out so well for those who want me dead, because oh look – hello. Still here.”

“We do not feign action this time. You _will_ be executed; we simply remain uncertain as to when. If we cannot utilise you for our gains, then no one can. That is the decision of the Council.” 

“Rassilon,” Ohila warned, taking half a step towards Emma. “You cannot be serious. You cannot truly seek to kill this child.” 

“You speak of her as if you care for her.” 

“The Sisterhood _do_ care for her, since the Time Lords decided that it was beneath them to raise a toddler.” 

“You care for her in more than that way, though. Do not lie to me, Ohila. It would not bode well for you.” 

“She is only a child,” Ohila reminded him. “More than that, she is a child who has done no wrong, Rassilon. You cannot murder her for virtue of who she is or the refusal to acquiesce to your will. I will not allow the murder of innocents. Do you not remember the Time War? The Daleks slew all those they encountered, including children. If you kill Emma, are you really any better than those you wanted to use her to obliterate?”

“Woman, do not oppose me.”

“I do not oppose you alone, Rassilon, and I do not fear you. If you want the child, be prepared to fight for her.”

“Ohila…” Emma began, but she found herself scooped into the old woman’s arms protectively. “What…”

“If it is a fight you want,” Rassilon snarled, his face contorted with rage. “Then a fight you will get.”

 

* * *

 

Ohila clutched Emma to her chest as they cowered deep within the labyrinths of a cave system, the toddler too mute with terror to consider crying. From above their heads came the sound of shelling, and the rock walls that surrounded them shuddered every few minutes, dust raining down onto them as they prayed the structure would hold, and would afford them some protection from the amassed artillery of the Time Lord Army. 

“This may have been a bad plan,” Ohila confessed in a moment of respite, guilt evident in her words. “Coming down here.” 

“It was this or stay up there,” Emma retorted in a small, terrified voice that attempted levity, before burying her face in the elderly woman’s shoulder in search of reassurance. “And I don’t fancy the chances of those who stayed behind.” 

“Gods,” Ohila paled as she realised the gravity of Emma’s words. “My sisters…” 

“Your sisters knew what they were fighting for,” Emma rationalised, trying to keep them both calm and prevent a descent into hysteria. “They knew what Rassilon was capable of, but they chose to fight for me. Not that I wanted them to, but there’s no reasoning with people as stubborn as yourself.” 

“Child,” Ohila tapped the little girl on the nose, allowing herself to be distracted. There would be time enough to mourn at a later date. “You have far too much impudence for one so young.”

“Like parents, like daughter,” Emma said with a smile that warmed Ohila’s heart and filled her with a newfound courage. “That’s what they told me often enough.” 

“They would be right,” Ohila said with a chuckle, cupping Emma’s cheek with her palm in a surprisingly tender gesture. “As-” 

There was a thunderous cacophony from above, and both fell silent once more, filled with an irrational fear that talking may draw the attention of the Lord President, and betray their location to the Gallifreyan soldiers who had formerly sought to protect Emma. They huddled in the darkness, clinging to each other as the bombardment continued for what felt like hours, purplish-red rock dust settling on their clothes and skin and giving them a peculiar, inhuman look. Shifting Emma in her arms, Ohila drew her shawl over the little girl in a vain effort to protect her from the cloying, choking dust, beginning to rock backwards and forwards and offering silent prayers to gods she only half-believed in, asking them to spare their lives and deliver them safely at the end of this ordeal. As the bombardment continued, fragments of rock dislodged themselves from the walls and clattered to the floor, but Ohila only squeezed her eyes more tightly shut and continued to pray, asking for forgiveness and safety as she bartered everything she had for the protection of the deities she had placed her faith in. In her arms, she felt Emma burrow into her and begin to mumble the Lord’s Prayer, the only prayer she knew, and she knew the little girl was begging for a miracle as much as she was. 

With a final, ear-splitting _boom_ , the shelling ceased, and Ohila blinked the dust from her eyes, turning and searching blindly in the darkness for approaching soldiers. But the silence was absolute, and she straightened up with hesitation, keeping Emma held against her as she did so.

“I think we’re safe,” she murmured, cradling the little girl and checking her over in a silent appraisal. “I think it’s over.” 

“It’s not over,” Emma shook her head emphatically, and Ohila knew that she was right: the respite would only be short-lived. “He would never give up.” 

“I was trying to make you feel better,” Ohila mused, glaring at the girl with little feeling. “To offer some small comfort to you after our near-deaths.” 

“We should go,” Emma whimpered, ignoring the woman’s words. “We should leave. I know it’s cowardly, but we can’t survive here. Please.” 

“I concur,” Ohila agreed, crouching and drawing a circle around them in the dust with a fingertip. “Don’t look at me like that, child.” 

“What are you doing?” 

“Getting us away from here.” 

“Why didn’t you do that while they were bombing us?” 

“Because,” Ohila hissed, scrawling symbols around the outline of the circle and trying to balance Emma in her other arm. “I couldn’t very well stand up while they were doing that, could I? What if I’d fallen over?” 

“Fine,” Emma said with petulance, watching the woman work her magic. “Hurry up.”

“I am!” Ohila complained, before holding Emma more securely against herself and reciting an incantation in the ceremonial tongue of Karn. With a quiet _whoosh,_ they vanished from the cave, disappearing into the unknown.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy gets a phone call from an unlikely contact; and in the spirit of camaraderie, passes on a message...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lord, I love writing Missy.

Missy circled the console of her TARDIS, pumping the handbrake with one hand as Ashildr looked on. “You’ve gotta do this with mine,” the Time Lady explained, throwing the remark over her shoulder casually, as though she were addressing herself and not her travelling companion-cum-reluctant business partner. “She likes it rough. She and I have that in common.”

“Gross,” Ashildr said, without much conviction, moving to face Missy across the bank of switches and dials in order to affix her with a curious look. “Where are we going?” 

“You humans,” Missy groused, half to herself. “Always wanting a destination. What’s wrong with just drifting? Wandering along and seeing where the tide takes you?” 

“Missy, have you _ever_ done that?” 

“Not really, no,” she admitted, scowling at having been proved wrong, before continuing in a more upbeat tone: “Planets to invade, people to enslave… one doesn’t have much time for drifting along the currents of time and space. It’s not a very precise way of getting anywhere.” 

“So where _are_ we going?” Ashildr repeated, leaning her elbows on the edge of the console and raising her eyebrows in a silent challenge. “Earth? Gallifrey?” 

“Don’t be silly, dear. Gallifrey is lost.” 

“There’s a large post-it note stuck on the screen saying ‘Joy! Gallifrey is not lost!’” Ashildr pointed out, indicating it with her thumb. “I can read.” 

“Shut up,” Missy muttered. “Yeah, it’s not lost. Doesn’t mean I fancy popping by and making a domestic visit. It’s more of a warning note, really. Note the sarcasm. It’s… well. They, ah, don’t like me very much back there.”

“Can’t imagine why.” 

“Are you always this rude?” Missy wondered, rolling her eyes heavenwards in exasperation. “Yes, they don’t like me. Yes, it may have something to do with me being a megalomaniacal, homicidal, unstable renegade. Which is downright hypocritical of them, really, they’re very much keen on being the first two.” 

“Really?” 

“The Great Time Wars,” Missy reminded her companion, accompanying her words with a pointed look. “Mass genocide is their version of golf.” 

“You’re not really selling the place to me.” 

“Well you couldn’t afford it, even if it was for sale,” Missy smirked, mulling the idea over. “At least not yet. Hopefully my bezzie mate’s darling little girl is taking the place to hell in a handcart, so maybe in a couple of years we can break it down and sell it for scrap. The silly hats alone must be worth thousands.”

“I’m sure you once had a silly hat.” 

“Don’t be preposterous.” 

“Let me guess, they didn’t fit over your hair?” 

“Didn’t have that much hair back then. Or _these_ ,” Missy grasped at her breasts and squeezed, tipping Ashildr a wink as she did so. “I was a lovely chap back then, but I refused to wear the silly hats. I mean, have you seen them? Enough to give anyone neckache.”

“Fair point,” Ashildr concurred with an easy shrug. “Look, want me to do anything? Steer? Programme in coordinates? Make the tea?”

“Now you mention it, tea would be excellent,” Missy purred, glad to have acquired a servant of sorts. “Milk, two s-”

The phone rang, shrill and insistent, and Missy turned to gawp at it. It had been years since it had done that. She hadn’t been entirely sure it still _could._  

“Is it meant to do that?” Ashildr asked, noting the Time Lady’s look of consternation. 

“It’s a _phone_.” 

“So answer it.”

“I don’t know who it is!” 

“Seriously? All that technology and you don’t have caller ID? What if it’s your bezzie mate?” 

“Good point,” Missy capitulated, and snatched up the phone from its cradle, sticking it between her shoulder and her ear and adopting a seductive tone. “Hello, handsome.” 

“Koschei?” came a gratingly familiar voice, and Missy felt her blood run cold, almost dropping the handset in shock. “Is that you?”

“What the hell do you want?” Missy snarled, regaining her composure as her temper flared. “You have no right to call me.”

“Koschei, we have a problem that needs addressing,” Rassilon explained bluntly. “Namely: the hybrid. Don’t try and play innocent with me, we know that you know what it is, and we know you’ve been involved.”

“I created the damn thing,” Missy said, unable to keep the pride from her voice. “If it wasn’t for me, the Doctor and that little human would still be mooning after each other like lovesick puppies.” 

“Yes, I’m not sure whether your intervention with Theta Sigma and the girl is entirely welcome,” Rassilon mused, his words tinged with bitter amusement. “However-”

“ _Theta Sigma_?” Missy asked with incredulity, transported back to the Academy for a whirlwind moment at the evocation of the old name. “No one’s called him that for years. No one’s been stupid enough to call me Koschei either.” 

“Why? That is your name, is it not?”

“Not anymore. The last bastard who tried to call me it got… what was it now? Ah yes. Eaten alive, by sand piranhas.”

“You don’t scare me, Koschei,” Rassilon said calmly, his manner only serving to infuriate Missy further. “Gallifrey needs you.”

“Gallifrey can fuck right off.”

“Koschei…” 

“ _Stop calling me that!_ ” Missy roared, unable to keep her temper any longer. “It is not my name! If you want my help, you will refer to me by my honorific only. You will not call me that name. Do you understand?” 

“Yes,” Rassilon acquiesced with a maddening serenity that she knew he was battling to maintain. “Now, _Missy_. We have a concern surrounding the child. Namely that Ohila has fled Gallifrey with her.”

“And why did she do that?” Missy asked, already half-knowing the answer. “Does it have anything to do with disagreeing with your plans for her?”

“It might.”

“Tell me what they are, then, or I’ll hang up.”

“We want to terminate the child.” 

“Right. And I factor into this… how?” 

“We want you to come and join us for an assault on Karn.” 

“ _Karn_?!” Missy yelped, horrified by the very notion. “You’re insane. The place is a fortress.” 

“We know. That’s why we need as many Time Lords as possible, renegade or otherwise.” 

“How many have you convinced to come back so far?”

There was a long pause, and Missy rolled her eyes at the sheer theatrics of the man. “We phoned you first.” 

“Well, I’m honoured,” Missy deadpanned, raising her eyebrows before realising he couldn’t see her and thus adding: “And why would that be?” 

“Your name carries weight,” Rassilon confessed, and she knew how much it would pain him to admit that. “If we can tell others that you’re on side…” 

“Then they’ll be completely opposed to your crackpot cause. Hadn’t you noticed? I’m unhinged. That’s what I do. I’m unhinged and I scare people.” 

“Missy, we need your help. Will you join us to come to Karn and lay siege to the planet? We cannot do it without you.” 

“Very well. But only to piss off those sanctimonious little sisters in their crimson robes. I will take no part in killing. Got it?” 

“We understand. Godspeed, Mistress.” 

The line went dead, and Missy hung up, crossing to the screens and programming coordinates into the console as she did so. Karn. It would make a nice side trip, if nothing else.

“You’re not seriously considering going?” Ashildr asked in horror, reaching for Missy’s wrist and then thinking better of the idea. “To besiege a planet, seize a child and kill it?” 

“Well, of course I am,” Missy sang with a confidence she did not feel. “Messing with things is exactly my vibe.”

“She’s a _child_!” 

“I’m not going to kill her, don’t get your knickers in a twist!” Missy rolled her eyes at the immortal girl’s concern, realising she needed to explain her plan. “Just mess with the Time Lords a little, but I can’t do that unless I go there, can I? So I go there under the guise of helping, steal Emma, and manage to somehow redeem my immortal soul, or whatever. That.”

“Right.”

“But first, I need to make a phone call.”

 

* * *

 

The Doctor looked across the console to where his wife was slumped in the reading chair, thumbing inattentively through a worn copy of _War and Peace_ with a hollow, empty-eyed expression _._ He considered crossing the room to her and taking her hands, embracing her and telling her things were going to be alright, but his train of thought was interrupted by the phone on the console ringing. 

Clara roused from her state of inertia, eyes brightening as she looked to her husband with something resembling hope, her entire face lighting up as she looked between him and the phone with a smile. 

“Answer it!” she urged, making small encouraging gestures as she spoke. “It might be Jack; they might have news!”

Apprehensively, he lifted the phone to his ear and grimaced. “Hello?”

“Hello, dearie,” came a familiar Scottish lilt, and he groaned. “Now, that’s not terribly nice, is it?” 

“What do you want, Missy?” he asked wearily, and he watched Clara’s face fall as she sank back into the leather depths of the chair with a look of despondency. 

“I’ve got some juicy gossip for you, all the way from Gallifrey,” she all but sang, thrumming with energy even from the other end of a phone. “About Emma.” 

“Emma?” his hands tightened on the receiver and Clara got up and crossed to his side at once, wrapping her arms around him as she craned her head upwards to eavesdrop on what Missy had to say. “What about her?” 

“She’s on Karn,” Missy intimated. “With Ohila. The Sisterhood have gone to war with Gallifrey, or possibly the other way around. Rassilon is amassing the troops to stage an intervention, and guess what? I was invited.” 

“You?” the Doctor snarled, displeased and concerned at the thought. “Why you?” 

“Because I’m insane and bordering on suicidal in my schemes,” she explained patiently, in a tone that indicated that it should be obvious. “I’m heading to Karn. If you meet me there, we can get Emma back.” 

“What’s in this for you, Missy?” he asked, wary about her involvement in the scheme. “What do you get out of this little plea bargain?” 

“To do the right thing,” she told him, her tone almost sincere, and his hearts ached to believe her. “To help a friend.” 

“How do I know that you won’t betray us like you have in the past?” 

“Because you know who that little girl reminds me of, and you know that I would never hurt her. I want you to be happy.” 

“You keep trying to kill me. Well. Us.”

“I keep giving you problems to solve by trying to kill you. You like doing that, don’t you? So I’m helping, really. Look, are you coming to Karn, or aren’t you?” 

“We’re on our way,” he assured her, then hung up before she could say anything further, turning to his wife with breathless excitement and saying in a rush. “Emma is on Karn. She’s safe, Clara, she’s safe and we can get her back, and this entire business will be over.” 

“Promise?”

“Of course I promise.”

“Well then,” Clara danced away from him, already raring to go and programming coordinates. “To Karn.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving on Karn, Clara tries to be realistic about finding Emma. But what she and the Doctor discover is much more shocking...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments and continuing support! I'm currently accepting prompt fills relating to Emma, Twelve, Clara, and River, so if you have any requests please leave them in the comments section!

Clara stepped out of the TARDIS, attempting to look braver than she felt. She was clad head-to-toe in clothes of dusty red, which the Doctor had assured her would offer a degree of camouflage amongst the rocky landscapes of Karn, and holding aloft what resembled a Viking shield, but the Doctor had promised would deflect weapon attacks from even the most sophisticated of Time Lord weapons. She felt, on the whole, rather silly, but as she peeked over the top of her shield she realised that there was no one left on the planet to judge her, and sighed in relief.

“Doctor?” she hissed, and he stuck his head out of the TARDIS behind her, clad similarly but holding up the sonic screwdriver as one would an offensive weapon. “Everyone is gone.”

“So they would appear to be,” he marvelled, looking around them in surprise before turning back to Clara with an apologetic grin. “We appear to be late to the party.” 

Clara glowered at him in silence, unsure whether he was jesting with her or whether he really had failed to note the implications of their tardiness. 

“What?” he asked, seeming genuinely confused in the wake of her irritation. “It’s not my fault it took us so long to get here. It’s nearly the end of the universe, Clara, it was always going to be a long trip.” 

“Fine,” she conceded, squinting around them at the barren landscape. “Where the hell is everyone though?” 

“I don’t know,” he raised his eyebrows in consternation. “I’m not psychic.” 

“Yes you are.” 

“Clara, these are rocks! Besides, I’m not _psychic,_ I’m telepathic, there’s a difference. My limbic resonance is limited to…” 

“Just use the damn sonic screwdriver,” Clara said with exasperation, her tone pleading. “Please and also thank you.”

“Fine,” he retorted, and brandished it in a loose semi-circle, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth as he scanned the surrounding landscape. “All clear, mostly. There’s two living beings about a mile over that hill, but they’re not armed, so not Time Lords. We should probably go and say hi, offer them a lift off-planet or something similar. Seems the polite thing to do.” 

“What if they’re Time Lord captives? Stripped of weapons and probably dangerously pissed off?”

“Then they can stay here, ideally in their pants,” the Doctor tipped her a wink, and she felt herself grin in response to his teasing. “Does that satisfy your revenge fantasies?”

“Oh yes.”

“Good. Over the hill we go then.” 

 _Hill_ turned out to be an underestimation of the geological form in front of them. Clara probably would’ve picked the term “mountain,” if she’d had enough breath left to chastise the Doctor with as he clambered ahead of her, infuriatingly graceful for a man that was so long of limb. She scrambled inelegantly in his wake, shield hitched over her shoulder as she gasped for breath and wondered precisely what the advantage was of being half-Time Lord, if it didn’t mean the inability to keep one’s composure in the face of climbing space-mountains. 

“Clara,” the Doctor’s voice drifted back to her from up ahead. “Stop breathing.” 

“What the hell?” she muttered, irked by the idiocy of his suggested. “I need to do that,” she added more loudly, hoping he hadn’t heard the first part. “To breathe. I’m sorry if me _breathing loudly_ is distracting to you.” 

“No, really, stop breathing and keep walking.” 

“How the hell-” 

“Just try it.” 

She rolled her eyes at his back in a way that meant _fine,_ took a deep breath and then held it, continuing to place one foot in front of the other as she ascended the ochre-coloured rock with determination. She waited for her lungs to start burning or to feel the instinctual need to gasp for air, but instead she found her body continuing to function as normal as she walked behind her husband in forced silence. 

“OK,” she said after a few minutes, letting out the breath she had been holding in order to address the Doctor. “How the hell is that a thing?” 

“Your biology got rewired,” the Doctor reminded her, without looking back to where she was trailing behind him. “Not quite a bypass, but you can most likely synthesise oxygen out of CO2 now. You might sweat black residue, but it’s probably a useful skill to have.” 

“Great,” she retorted in as sarcastic a tone as she could manage under the circumstances. “Nice to know. Can we focus on the task at hand, instead of using me as a science experiment?” 

“I’m not using you as a science experiment, your brain was leak-” 

They fell silent as they reached the top of the hill and looked down onto the barren plain that lay beyond, the destruction of the battle spread before them. The corpses of soldiers were strewn across the landscape, their armour dented by unseen forces and their faces frozen in blind looks of incomprehensible terror, rendering their youth plain to see even to the untrained observer. There was a large, smooth crater to one side, as though something had detonated there, and there was a film of red dust settled over the entire scene, giving everything an unnatural, hazy quality that tricked the eye and made Clara feel uneasy. 

“So,” she said in a falsely optimistic tone, trying to quell her mounting sense of horror that this had occurred in the presence of Emma, and that she may have been harmed in the chaos. “Alive people?” 

“In the crater.” 

“What do you think it was?” she reached for his hand as they started descending towards the battlefield, the rocks on this side reduced to scree that was easy to slide down. “The crater?” 

“I’d say the result of a TARDIS’s Short Range Emergency Escape System.” 

“The what?” Clara asked, reaching the bottom of the hill and sliding to an ungainly halt, shaking her feet to dislodge the loose pieces of rock that had covered her boots. 

“It’s a very old system, back from the early days of Gallifrey. Not all TARDISes would have it, although mine does as it’s an older model. It was a method to help learner pilots, in case they materialised in the wrong place. The system meant that TARDISes could cause a blast radius of… well, about that crater, to give the pilots enough room to then _de_ materialise.” 

“Did you ever use yours?” 

“Couple of times. Nearly got stuck in a block of ice once. Messy business,” the Doctor squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Look, this might not be Emma, you know.” 

“I know,” Clara assured him, as they approached the crater, her heart in her mouth at what they might find but trying to tell herself that there was no evidence of Emma being dead, and that could only be a positive sign. “But whoever it is, we can deal with it.” 

The Doctor nodded, and they kept walking across the battlefield in silence, approaching the edge of the crater and looking down into it through the dust. There, held in the basin of the chasm in the earth, was Ohila, stood before a figure on their knees in a penitent position as the old women chanted in her native tongue. 

“Doctor…” Clara began quietly, but Ohila fell silent nevertheless, looking up at them with a bemused expression that clearly conveyed a sense of chastisement for their lateness. 

“Child of earth,” she said simply, raising one hand in acknowledgement of their presence and beckoning them down to her. “Child of Gallifrey.” 

“Who are you punishing?” the Doctor asked, scrambling into the crater before Clara could stop him, and she swore internally. “That’s a Karnian punishment chant, so who is it?” 

“It is not your friend,” she assured him in a calm voice, and Clara sighed, following after him and keeping one wary eye on Ohila. “Do not fear that I have harmed Koschei. I would if I could, but it is not she.” 

The Doctor reached the pair and knelt, tilting the kneeling figure’s head up and inhaling sharply in shock. 

“Doctor?” Clara called, fear gripping her that this may be her child and that they may have arrived woefully, hideously late. “Who is it?” 

“It’s…” he fell silent for a moment, before continuing: “It’s Ashildr.” 

Clara’s heart leapt with relief as she reached his side, wavering only slightly under Ohila’s gaze, before she dropped to her knees beside him, looking at the girl with horror. The Viking girl’s eyes were empty and blank, and her skin was a pale shade of greyish-white that looked cold and unnatural. 

“What did you do to her?” she asked, the residual remains of her teaching instincts kicking in as she decided to get to the bottom of what had occurred. “Why is she like this?” 

“It is the cost of what she has done. Do not concern yourself with this matter.”

“She was involved in the loss of my child, of course I am concerned with this matter!” Clara said angrily, standing up and drawing herself up to her full height. “Look, what happened to her?”

“She has been punished for taking your child.” 

“Clara,” the Doctor said gently, tugging at her hand and forcing her to look down at them both. “Clara, she’s alright, she’s just shocked.” 

“She doesn’t look alright.” 

“Well, she’s going to get a bit of a shock when she comes to. Isn’t she, Ohila?” 

The old woman chuckled drily. “You could phrase it thus, yes.” 

“Why?”

“She’s had her immortality stripped,” the Doctor said pragmatically. “She’ll no longer heal, so she can stop being pissed off at me. That’ll be a nice change.”

“Won’t all the years catch up to her and she’ll turn into dust, though?” 

“Please,” the Doctor scoffed at the very idea. “That only happens in bad films.” 

“Can we talk to her?” Clara asked, chewing her lip as she considered the idea. “I mean, I think someone needs to tell her what’s happened.” 

“She knows,” Ohila said simply. “She is quite aware of the nature of her crimes.” 

“Well I’m not,” Clara snapped. “So wake her up, I want to speak to her.” 

“You may address her and she will tell you what you need to know, child of earth.”

“Good,” Clara muttered, crouching once more and smiling at the Viking girl as encouragingly as she was able. “Right then. Ashildr? Hey? Can you tell us what happened?” 

“We landed,” the girl began, in a passive tone that was quite unlike her former, fiery self. “We landed upon Karn and Missy met with the Lord President himself, in his might and glory.”

“Spare us the propaganda,” the Doctor complained. “He’s not that glorious.” 

“She met with the Lord President in his TARDIS, and they discussed the battle to be had. I was to be the decoy. A peace envoy to Ohila, to distract her attention. And so, my time came and I descended to this planet with weapons concealed about my person, to speak with the guardian of the child. I attempted to incapacitate her and snatched the child as the forces of Gallifrey attacked the planet, and the guns began to fire. The child screamed as she watched her father’s people die, but I could not tell if it was with relief or with fear. I was running, I was running so far and so fast, but Missy took her from me and she went into her TARDIS and it exploded. I was on fire; I was in so much pain. And when I opened my eyes again, the soldiers were dead and it was only myself and Ohila remaining here.” 

“Where is Missy now?” Clara asked, feeling her stomach clench as she realised that the insane Time Lady had her daughter. “Where has she taken Emma?” 

“I do not know.” 

“Is Emma OK?” 

“I do not know.” 

“You saw her! You held her!” 

“She was of average weight and size when I held her. She was thinking and speaking as she did before. She was distressed, but I do not know why.” 

“Maybe because of all the bloody guns and soldiers?” 

“She misses you,” Ohila interjected, her eyes downcast as she interrupted the two women. “She misses you both very much.” 

“She does?” Clara asked, her eyes filling with tears at the thought of her little girl alone and terrified.

“She spoke of you often.” 

“You… you cared for her? You were with her?” 

“Of course I did. The Time Lords considered the raising of children far below their intellectual level, thus the Sisterhood of Karn were left to care for the child. We do not harm children.” 

“You harmed Ashildr,” Clara reminded her, raising an eyebrow in a silent challenge. “She’s all weird and robotic now.” 

“She was not harmed _by_ myself. Her immortality was rescinded as punishment for her actions. Her condition is a result of biological shock as her cells are forced to confront the reality of no longer being able to regenerate. The shock will pass, and she will recover. Moreover, she was no child. She may have been when you made her into what she was, Doctor, but experience shaped her into a woman. A child of past times, certainly, but not a child in any other respect.”

“Ashildr?” the Doctor said in a gentle tone, catching the girl’s attention and smiling warmly. “Hey. We need your help.” 

“I cannot help you.” 

“You know Missy. You travelled with Missy. With your help, we can find her again.” 

“I do not know her well enough to assist you.” 

“You were working with her, Ashildr; you can be of so much help to us. We’re going to help you, OK?” 

“You will not,” Ohila said sharply. “You will do no such thing.”

“Ohila, you have a Sisterhood to rebuild,” the Doctor reminded her. “We will take care of the ex-immortal, while you take care of Karn. Deal?” 

“Very well. But bring her back when you are finished.” 

“Why?” Clara asked, her brow furrowing. “What use is she to you?”

“She may be my first acolyte. The sinner may become penitent and devoted. That is the cost of you taking her.”

“Fine,” Clara concurred, helping the Viking girl to her feet. “We’ll bring her back to you.” 

“Alive?” 

“Yes, alive,” Clara rolled her eyes. “We promise.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Ashildr's punishment, she agrees to cooperate with the Doctor and Clara. But are her motives genuine?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are really starting to kick off, eh? Thank you as ever for the lovely comments!

The unlikely trio returned to the TARDIS in silence, a sombre mood having settled over them as they crossed the wilderness of Karn – one that they found they could not quite shake. Ashildr had kept her head bowed, stumbling over her feet as she walked, and in the end Clara had taken pity on the girl and slipped an arm around her waist, helping her as they traversed the rocky landscape scarred by the recent battle. Once safely inside the console room, the Doctor helped the former immortal into an armchair with a tenderness that surprised Clara, who watched as he smiled at her gently and touched her as though she were made of glass – which in a way, Clara supposed that she was now her immortality had been cruelly rescinded. 

“Urm,” Clara began uncertainly, looking between the two of them as the Doctor tucked a blanket around the girl’s legs with the utmost care. “Does tea sound like a good plan, or do we want to just go and kick arse without considering the consequences?” 

“Tea sounds good,” the Doctor concurred, and Clara watched as his gaze flickered over Ashildr, checking her for any physical injuries that might accompany her mental trauma. “Might help with the shock. Plenty of sugar.” 

“Don’t do anything weird until I get back.” 

“Define _weird_?” 

“Telepathic. She’s already got enough going on without you going poking around in her mind, so be nice, OK?” 

“Clara, she’s in shock,” he looked at her with an affronted expression, and she felt a twinge of guilt for entertaining the notion that he might do such a thing. “I’ll look after her, don’t you worry.” 

“Fine,” she shrugged and cast a final lingering glance over the Viking girl before heading to the kitchen and making three mugs of tea, returning to the console room some time later with them precariously balanced on a tray in front of her. “Shock cure: coming right up.”

“The tray is a nice touch. Very domestic.”

“As I don’t have three hands, it’s also a _necessity_ ,” Clara waited until he had retrieved his mug, before kneeling carefully before Ashildr and handing her one, setting the tray aside and blowing on her own drink to cool it. “It’s OK,” she said quietly to the girl, offering her an encouraging smile. “You can drink, it’ll help. It’s just tea, milk, and sugar, nothing else.” 

She watched as the girl raised the mug to her mouth and sipped tentatively, the colour returning to her cheeks as the liquid warmed her from the inside out. After a few moments, Ashildr looked up, meeting Clara’s gaze for a fraction of a second before looking to the Doctor with a sense of trepidation and visibly trembling in anticipation of what he might be about to do. 

“It’s alright,” he said in a soft voice, one that Clara knew he usually reserved for young, terrified children they had saved. “We aren’t angry at you – quite the opposite. We want to help you, but you might… you might have to help us first. Can you do that?” 

“Urm,” the girl said, clearing her throat and then taking another gulp of tea. “I think I can, yes. How?” 

“We need to find a certain Time Lady,” the Doctor said, ignoring the glare that Clara was giving him – one that clearly indicated how inappropriate she thought his timing was considering the shock that the girl had just suffered. “One that has Emma with her.” 

“You want to find Missy?” Ashildr asked, with a hollow, mirthless laugh. “That’s not difficult, is it? Follow the trail of destruction.”

“There-”

“Doctor, she’s in shock,” Clara interjected, feeling a lingering and unwelcome sense of protectiveness towards the girl. “She needs to recover, can’t this wait?”

“No,” Ashildr said flatly. “Because if you wait, Missy will do something insane. If there’s no destruction anywhere discernible, then she’s fled somewhere to wait things out before she moves on.” 

“Did she mention anywhere to you?” 

“ _Doctor_.” 

“No, I want to help,” the Viking girl assured Clara, before turning her attention back to the Time Lord and concentrating in silence for a few moments. “She mentioned a planet but she didn’t name it. She said it was within touching distance of Alpha Centauri, and that the sky was green. If that helps at all. I know it’s not much to go on, sorry.” 

The Doctor grimaced, getting up and crossing to the monitors to type in the limited description that Ashildr had provided. “Well…” he said after a few seconds, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m an idiot for not thinking of it. It’s Medelia-7, Missy used to take her, ah… amorous connections there. Nice little planet, not overly populated, so the locals bowed to her will fairly easily.” 

“Missy had amorous connections?” Clara asked with incredulity, half-amused and half-repulsed by the thought. “They must have been even more insane than she was.” 

“Usually, yep,” the Doctor made a face. “Or suicidal. She liked sending them into battle or making them fight in tournaments. You know, the usual kind of mayhem Missy tends to relish.”

“So we just need to go to her… I don’t know, love nest, or whatever it is, and get Emma back?”

“Yep.”

“Does that not seem a bit easy to you? It does to me.” 

“Well, yes, but I’m trying to hope for the best here. Optimism, and all that.” 

“If we get killed-” 

“We are not going to get killed. At least I sincerely doubt it, anyway. Missy isn’t the type to kill me, she’d get far too lonely, and if she killed you it’d only get me on her bad side. So, stop worrying, Clara… this could be it! Our chance to get Emma back.” 

“Great. Let’s go then.” 

“Patience is a virtue,” he rolled his eyes at her impatience, but programmed coordinates and disengaged the handbrake all the same, the three occupants of the TARDIS fixing their eyes on the time rotor as it rose and fell and collectively holding their breath at the thought of what was to come. “There.” 

“So Emma could be…” 

“Out there,” he finished for her, offering the two women a tight, reassuring smile that Clara recognised as barely concealing his nerves. “Yep. Ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Ashildr?”

“I suppose,” the girl said quietly, getting to her feet and finding her balance after a few seconds of teetering. “Ready, I think.”

“Well then,” the Doctor took a deep breath, widened his smile and flung open the doors to the TARDIS, a sickly green light shining over the threshold as the sun beat down from an emerald sky. “Medelia-7.” 

“Good lord, you’re getting good at this,” came a bemused Scottish voice from outside the TARDIS, and Clara stepped outside and took in the sight of Missy, perched on a rock and cradling a sleeping Emma against her chest, rocking her gently. “Tracking me down.”

Clara felt her heart stop as she looked over at her little girl, bundled up in a blanket and sound asleep in the Time Lady’s arms. She was bigger than she had been the last time Clara saw her, and although a part of her knew that it was to be expected, it still broke her heart to think of how much she had missed. Yet other than that, Emma seemed unchanged and – Clara felt a weight lift from her chest – mercifully unharmed. Half of her wanted to call out to her daughter, to cross the distance between herself and Missy and snatch the little girl back and never let go again, but she knew to be wary of the Time Lady and instead clenched her fists, forcing herself to stay where she was. 

“Missy,” she said, with as much civility and restraint as she could manage. “Just give her back, please. That’s all we ask of you – just give her back to us.” 

“Boring.” 

“She’s our _daughter_.” 

“Yes, and she got kidnapped from your care.” 

“Admittedly that was by Ashildr, on behalf of your psychotic people, so it doesn’t really reflect that badly on us as parents.” 

“No,” came a lazy drawl from beside her, and Clara looked up to see Ashildr brandishing a small, rusted blade, one arm wrapped around the Doctor’s throat and a malicious gleam in the Viking girl’s eyes. Her stomach dropped as she realised that they had been used, and she closed her eyes against the scene for several seconds, fighting to keep her composure. “It’s all on me, really. Absolutely my bad.” 

“Ashildr, what the _hell_ are you doing?” Clara asked, taking half a step closer to the Doctor and watching the former immortal’s blade creep closer to his throat as she did so. For his part, the Time Lord remained remarkably silent, and Clara thanked the gods that he had the sense to keep his mouth shut. “Put it down. You’re in shock, you’re not thinking straight…”

“What’s she in shock from?” Missy asked, with barely-suppressed glee at the new development, grinning as she asked: “Was it his driving? It does that.”

“They stripped me of my immortality,” the girl spat, but Missy’s smirk only widened in the face of her anger. “They stripped me of it, and so I’m going to get it back. I don’t want this miserable, filthy, mortal body. I don’t deserve this – I deserve far _better_ than this.” 

“And how are you going to get your immortality back, dearie? You’ve pissed off the Sisterhood of Karn, which means the Sacred Flame is all gone, so that limits your options somewhat. The Mire are going to be on their guard against rogue Time Lords with screwdrivers, and I don’t think any of us are willing to consume the Time Vortex and do you a favour like dear old Jack received, so what are you going to do?”

“Oh, please. Like I’d tell you.”

“The thing is,” Clara mused aloud, adopting a tone similar to Missy’s in the hope it might provoke the girl into talking. “You’re being clever, and clever people _love_ sharing their plans.” 

“Do we?” Ashildr and Missy asked at the same time, both looking to Clara with similar looks of consternation, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes. 

“Yep,” Clara said, with more confidence than she felt. “You do. So, come on Ashildr. Tell us. Where are you going to find the cure to your newfound mortality?”

“Easy,” the girl retorted, looking from Clara to Missy to Emma, and then pressing her knife harder against the Doctor’s throat. “Gallifrey.”

“And how are you going to get there?” Missy asked with disdain, visibly unimpressed by this plan. “It’s rather off the beaten track at present. You can’t just hitch a lift from a passing ship.” 

“You’ve got a vortex manipulator.” 

“So I have.” 

“Give it to me.”

“Go to hell.” 

Ashildr pressed her blade down again, and a thin line of blood bloomed across the Doctor’s throat, pinpricks of it rolling down and staining the edge of his collar crimson. 

“Ashildr,” Clara said with desperation, trying to formulate a plan. “Please don’t do this.” 

“Give me the vortex manipulator,” the girl reiterated calmly. “And he lives.” 

“You do know that throat-slitting is basically man-flu for Time Lords?” the Doctor choked out, breaking his tactical silence. “It’s really not all that-”

“Shut up, or I’ll ensure you don’t regenerate, and then your lovely little wife will be left _utterly_ desolate. Missy, give me the manipulator. Now.” 

Clara looked to the Time Lady, silently begging her to cooperate with the Viking girl in order to save the Doctor’s life. With a theatrical sigh, Missy set Emma carefully down at her feet and unstrapped the device, tossing it over to Ashildr with a casual, one-handed throw. 

What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion, as Ashildr lunged across the space between them, manipulator clutched securely in one hand as she seized Emma and programmed coordinates with a well-rehearsed ease. 

“Sorry about this,” she said with a sneer, backing away from the three of them and clutching Emma to her chest. “Bargaining chip.”

There was a _zap_ and she was gone. 

Clara fell to her knees and screamed, beating her fists against the floor as she wept for her daughter and the futility of their rescue attempt. They had been so close – she had _seen_ her little girl, had heard the reassuring sound of her breathing as she lay in Missy’s arms. But now they had been betrayed, and Emma had been snatched away from them once more. Not only snatched, but on the way to the most dangerous place in the universe for the toddler: Gallifrey. Where undoubtedly she would be executed upon sight, and the thought of that was too much for her. She curled into a foetal position and sobbed, barely noticing the Doctor’s arms encircling her and pulling her onto his lap as she howled. 

“I know,” he said quietly, stroking her back as he wept in silent solidarity. “Oh, Clara, I know.”

“She’s not _safe,_ ” she choked, appalled at the thought of their little girl alone against the might of the Time Lords. “She’s not safe there, they’ll kill her as soon as look at her… Ashildr betrayed us…” 

“I know,” he said again, pressing a kiss to her hair. “She-”

“Clara’s right,” Missy said, and Clara ceased her crying to look up at the Time Lady in synchronicity with the Doctor, horrified by her callousness. “She’s dead.” 

“Missy,” the Doctor began in a threatening tone. “Don’t-” 

“She’s dead _unless we intervene,_ ” Missy clarified, rolling her eyes at their shock. “So enough with the weeping, pet. The Viking bitch has screwed me over, and I’m not happy about this. What say you to a little revenge?” 

“What _kind_?” 

“The kind where we swoop in and rescue your daughter from under the very large nose of Rassilon and the High Council.” 

“Are you actually interested in saving her?” the Doctor asked warily. “Or just…” 

“Causing widespread terror on Gallifrey? A little of both. Mainly the latter. You give me a lift, I cause tactical chaos in order to get you into the Citadel, and then we go our separate ways.” 

“No,” Clara protested feebly, placing a hand on the Doctor’s chest. “I don’t trust you.” 

“Beggars can’t be choosers, dear. It’s this, or… well, one of you might end up dead. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?” 

“Missy,” the Doctor began, ignoring Clara’s scandalised look as she realised he was about to agree to the Time Lady’s crazy scheme. “Just… look, fine. Just don’t do anything insane.” 

“Have you _met_ me?” 

“I mean… in the _Moment._ ” 

“No promises.” 

“Doctor!” Clara protested, understanding what he meant with an impending sense of horror. “She can’t…” 

The Doctor sighed, closing his eyes and resigning himself to the situation at hand. “Deal.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor, Missy and Clara formulate a plan to get Emma back, but it involves heading right into the lion's den...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: here be drama...

“The thing about Gallifrey,” Missy began, circling the console and affixing the Doctor with the kind of look that clearly meant _you’re an idiot_. “Is that it’s stuck at the end of the universe, and is located out of sync with the rest of time.” 

“You say that like it’s a problem,” the Doctor fired back, ignoring her expression in favour of concentrating of running the scanner, chewing his lip as he looked at the readouts. “We can deal with that.” 

“Yes, but it’s a question of _finding_ the right amount of… out-of-sync-ness,” Missy continued, rolling her eyes at his inability to understand what she was getting at and clarifying: “The trial and error could take… years.” 

“Years?” Clara interjected, looking between the two Time Lords and feeling her stomach drop at the prospect of being too late to save their daughter. “We don’t have years; we need to find her!” 

“I’m doing everything I can,” the Doctor assured her, shooting her a tight smile that betrayed his fear. “I’m going to need your help though.” 

“ _My_ help?” 

“Telepathic interface,” he told her. “I can’t locate Gallifrey using the trial-and-error method, it’d take too long. Using the interface can get us there much faster, but I need _you_ to locate Emma while I pilot the TARDIS. You know how it works: the emotional bond. Call out to her with your heart, and the TARDIS can establish a link… and hopefully a location.” 

“And me?” Missy asked, pouting at her perceived omission from proceedings. “What can I do?” 

“Stay quiet so Clara can concentrate, and then help me steer. The TARDIS isn’t going to like entering Gallifrey’s time zone, so it’ll need a steady hand.”

Missy considered the proposal, then sighed in resignation. “Fine,” she concurred. “That sounds like something I can do.” 

Taking a deep breath, Clara moved around the console to the telepathic interface, slipping her fingers into it and feeling the familiar tingle of energy as a connection to the TARDIS was established. In her mind’s eye, she pictured Emma as clearly as she was able, allowing the feelings of loss she had been repressing to consume her, body and soul, as she yearned to be reunited with her daughter. She missed waking up to find the little girl curled into her side; missed the daily struggle of trying to convince Emma that sugary tea was _not_ a meal substitute, regardless of what daddy said; missed sitting with the toddler on her lap, the little girl reading as Clara braided her hair. She felt a reciprocal sense of sadness from the TARDIS as it showed her the games the two of them used to play – the time machine providing lengths of smooth corridor for Emma to slide down in her socks; lowering the library shelves so that the toddler could browse without fear of avalanches of leather-bound tomes; watching the family spend time together; and always bringing Emma safely back to them when they began to grow concerned about her location, rerouting the corridors to deliver her to them and allay their worries. 

She closed her eyes, realising just how much her heart ached for Emma – as though an essential part of her had been removed, leaving nothing behind but a jagged hole that hurt more with each passing day that she spent without her child. She wanted her back. She _needed_ her back, and the TARDIS responded to her pain, locking onto a location and throwing them into the vortex with a sense of urgency that was unlike the time machine. Clara knew she had done enough, but she found herself unable to pull away from the interface, tears tracking down her cheeks as she wept for Emma in silence. 

“Hey,” the Doctor murmured, slipping his arms around her waist in a gesture of comfort that failed to soothe the pain of their loss. “I’m here.” 

“I know,” she mumbled, pulling her hands free so she could turn and bury her face in his chest, breathing in his smell and trying to regain her composure. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he pressed a kiss to her forehead, cupping her cheek in his palm and smiling warmly. “We’ve got this.” 

“We’ve definitely got this, as we’ve landed,” Missy interjected, gesturing grandly to the doors. “I would strongly suggest vacating the premises before the Time Lords notice, however, as I’m sure they’d greatly enjoy trapping and killing us all like rats.” 

“You’re a bundle of laughs,” the Doctor rolled his eyes, but crossed to the doors nonetheless, sticking his head out and looking around. “All clear.”

“Really all clear, or pretendy all clear? Because you know Rassilon.” 

“Really all clear.” 

“Good-oh.” Missy followed her fellow Time Lord outside, then looked back to Clara with a grin of invitation. “Coming, dear?” 

Clara stepped outside with a sense of apprehension, disconcerted to finally be standing on the Doctor’s home planet. She had spent so long hearing of the dark side of the Time Lords – and witnessing it for herself – that she felt her anxiety levels spike, concerned that the race she had vilified may already be on the way to apprehend them and further tear her family apart. The fact that they found themselves in a deserted storeroom did little to calm her, but she tried to keep her breathing level, reaching for the Doctor’s hand and telling herself she could do this.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he promised, squeezing her hand reassuringly. “No matter what happens, I will keep you safe.” 

“But-” 

“Clara, I have a duty of care. Don’t argue about it, just accept it and accept I will fight for you.” 

“I…” she took a deep breath, deciding to opt for humour to disguise the tremor in her voice. “I accept it, but if we make it off this planet alive, then for the record I’m not happy about it and may have to bollock you later.” 

“When you two are _quite_ done being mushy, are we going to go and locate your child, or sit here and wait for the High Council to find us? Because I feel like they won’t be sympathetic to your cause – love story or no love story – and also I quite fancy blowing something up,” Missy said sweetly. “How does that sound?” 

To Clara’s surprise, the Doctor grinned widely at the proposal. “That sounds like a plan.” 

“Service duct?” 

“Service duct sounds good – with the usual, I presume?” 

“Of course.” 

“Excellent,” he paused for a few seconds, then added: “Missy? Thank you for this. Really. It… means a lot. Try not to die.” 

The Time Lady tilted her head to the side and smirked. “Dearie, it’s not just for you,” she winked. “Mainly I just enjoy blowing things up. Good advice on the not-dying front, though. I quite like this body.” 

The Doctor chuckled and made tiny shooing gestures with his hands, turning his head away, but Clara didn’t need to see him to know that his eyes would be damp at the prospect of saying goodbye to his friend-cum-enemy for what may be the final time. “Go. Go blow something up.”

“Understood.” 

With that, she turned on her heel and disappeared out into the corridor beyond the storage facility, leaving the Doctor and Clara behind in a terse silence. 

“What’s she blowing up?” Clara asked, feeling irrationally bothered about Missy’s impending act of terrorism, provoked or unprovoked. She wasn’t entirely sure that blowing things up was the best way to advertise one’s arrival on a planet, but she tried to tell herself that in this case, the ends justified the means. Possibly.

“Only a service duct. Heating, cooling, that kind of thing. Nothing that will cause too many problems, just enough to get some maintenance staff out to look at it, so that we can hijack their office.” 

“You have offices on Gallifrey?” 

“Of course we have offices,” he rolled his eyes, as though it should be obvious. “Where else would we work from?” 

“I dunno,” Clara shrugged. “Palaces?” 

“We have those too, but sadly not for maintenance staff. Now, we need to _find_ said office.” 

“Hang on,” Clara held up a warning hand. “Should you not have located that prior to sending Missy off?” 

“Clara,” the Doctor surveyed her with a pitying look. “I used to live here, and my people are predictable. There will be an office about four corridors over, because that’s how they do things.” 

“Sure?” Clara asked, unconvinced by his bravado and feeling a swooping sense of worry that they may be about to get caught, or lost, or both. “Because it’s been a while since-” 

There was a distant _boom_ , and before Clara could finish her sentence the Doctor had seized her by the hand and dragged her out into a veritable rabbit warren of corridors, pulling her behind him as he ran. 

“One… two… three…” he muttered under his breath, as corridors flashed past them, each dark and forbidding looking in a way that only served to make Clara feel more ill at ease. “Four!” 

He skidded to a halt and peered around the corner, before looking back at Clara and grinning with self-satisfaction. She groaned inwardly at the thought of how unbearable this was going to make him for the next few hours. 

“Office,” he said triumphantly. “ _Empty_ office. Empty office with _computer system_.” 

“Good,” she told him, keen to dispel his smugness before it could begin to inflate his ego. “I suggest using it.” 

“Yes boss,” he said brightly, rounding the corner with her hot on his heels and slipping into a small, claustrophobic office with steel walls. “Now…” 

Clara closed the door behind them, then locked it as a precautionary measure. She looked around in consternation, unable to locate anything that looked like a computer and feeling a mounting sense of panic about this fact. “How long have we got?” 

“Five minutes, tops. I bet they haven’t changed the password,” he sank down into a rickety desk chair and tapped the desktop, bringing up a hovering display. “Let’s see: _RassilonisthebestAD2mill_.” 

“Shut up,” Clara said in disbelief, unsure if he was joking or not. “That is not the password.” 

“That _was_ the password,” the Doctor assured her, typing it in and then whooping. “And would appear to still _be_ the password.” 

“Great. Get hunting.” 

“ _Patience._ ” 

Clara squinted over his shoulder, then realised the display was in Gallifreyan and gave up, instead watching his fingers dart over the keyboard in silence for several minutes. “Anything?”

“She’s in the Theatre.”

“Great, let’s go.” 

“No,” he turned to look at her, his eyes oddly wild and his voice tight. “The _Theatre_.” 

“Yes, I know what a theatre is.” 

“No, you don’t… this… it’s not like on Earth. It’s where they brainwash people, Clara.” 

“B-brainwash?” she stammered, her voice rising an octave at the thought. 

“In your terms, yes. But in Gallifreyan terms… it’s more like a reprogramming. A rewriting of your very being. If I’d stayed… they probably would’ve done that. I was far too renegade for their liking – and so is Emma.” 

“So we need to go and _get_ her, Doctor. Now. Why are we still talking?”

“Clara… it… you have to understand; she’s been in there a little while. There’s no knowing whether they’ve… started.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other, digesting the information that they may be too late to save the little girl they knew, and that instead they may find… well, they were both unsure. 

“We need to get there, really, don’t we?” Clara finally said, with more confidence than she felt. 

“That we do, yes.” 

“Let me guess: it’s heavily defended.” 

“It’s in the Citadel, so yes – sky trenches, shielding, the lot. We can’t just walk in there – not without help, and not without destroying the defensive infrastructure. I can’t do that by hacking in, we’re going to need…” 

“Weapons?” 

The Doctor wrinkled his nose at the word. “Much as I hate to say it, yes, we need weapons.” 

“It’s a good thing that we’ve got backup, really, isn’t it?” Clara grinned at the Doctor’s look of blind incomprehension, then groaned as she realised he wasn’t feigning his confusion. “Oh, you are so dense sometimes. Torchwood? UNIT?” 

“Are back on _Earth_ ,” the Doctor emphasised, looking at her in bafflement. “They’re not much good out here, are they? I wasn’t anticipating a battle on Gallifrey… if I had we could’ve phoned the Daleks, I’m sure they’d have enjoyed causing mayhem for a few hours.” 

“Doctor,” Clara said patiently, realising he needed to help him join the dots. “How did we get here?” 

“In the TARDIS. Is your memory failing?” 

“And how else can one traverse time and space?” 

“Well, vortex manipulators, but I keep having to confiscate them from Jack to stop him doing anything – or any _one_ – too outlandish. There was this time that-” 

“You know that duplication machine you got Kate for Christmas a while back?” 

“…yeah…” 

“Well, three guesses what she used it for.” She watched the Doctor’s face light up, and fought back the urge to laugh. “Now, I’d suggest heading back to the TARDIS, where you will find a lot of extremely loyal people with guns and battle strategies, all of whom are really, _really_ invested in getting our daughter back.” 

“I have mentioned that you’re a genius, right?” 

“Not often enough.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Gallifrey, the Doctor and Clara must fight for Emma's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tense, eh?

“Right,” the Doctor began uncertainly, looking around at the assembled troops, all of whom were looking at him in anticipation of their orders. “So… urm… the thing is… urm...”

“Shut up,” Clara interjected, stepping up and surveying the combined might of UNIT and Torchwood in a way that she hoped looked assertive. She raised her head a fraction, trying to look more confident than she felt. “Seeing as he’s awful at public speaking, I will be in charge.” 

“Will you?” her husband asked, blinking in consternation, but she only turned the force of her glare on him, shooting him a withering look. 

“Shut up,” she said again, then looked across the room to Kate, who was clad from head-to-toe in black, with a layer of body armour protecting her torso. “Have you got an action plan? I’m sincerely hoping so, because god knows, we don’t.” 

“We do,” the older woman concurred, clasping her hands together as she spoke. “It’s based on our old maps of Gallifrey… way back from the seventies or eighties. Probably slightly out of date now-” 

The Doctor scoffed dismissively. “The stuffy halfwits upstairs aren’t exactly great ones for change. Those plans will still be accurate, don’t you worry.” 

“Right. So, we’re headed for – did you say the Theatre?” 

“That’s right.” 

“According to our blueprints, that’s up in the Citadel, in the South Tower. We can lead a squad in there, lay down some basic cover for Jack and his team… what’s the stance on collateral?” 

“It’s Gallifrey,” the Doctor said with pragmatism, his expression uncharacteristically severe. “Collateral amounts to man flu.” 

“You’ve changed,” Kate observed, visibly taken aback by the coldness of his words and looking to Clara for reassurance before continuing: “You’re not usually this… militaristic.” 

“People don’t usually have my daughter held hostage, nor are they usually on the verge of brainwashing her.” 

“Salient point,” Kate acquiesced with an easy shrug, casting her gaze to the back of the room. “Jack?”

“Ma’am,” he stepped forward and flashed a smile at the assembled troops, in response to which Clara was relatively sure she heard at least three longing sighs. “We can blast deeper into the Citadel, then if we continue to work forwards, alternately covering each other, we can get you into the Theatre, no problem whatsoever.” 

“Excellent,” Clara smiled, bolstered by the duo’s confidence. “And thank you, all of you. Again. I know we keep saying it, but-” 

“Clara,” Jack said seriously, holding up a hand to silence her. “Stop thanking us, and take a gun.” 

“I get a gun?” 

“No gun,” the Doctor growled, snapping out of his pragmatic stance and shooting Jack a dark look. “Not for her.” 

“You _just_ said collateral wasn’t a problem, not to mention got all scary and cold,” she argued, narrowing her eyes at him accusatorily. “If they get guns then I want a gun.”

“It’ll make you a target.” 

“Yeah, like being your wife won’t make me a target at all.”

“That’s not the point.” 

“I’m having a gun, so at least when I’m running along corridors with a great big metaphorical bullseye on my back, I can shoot back at anyone who wants to take a pop at me. End of discussion.” 

“Fine,” he groused, his brows knitting together as she took a weapon from Jack and checked it over with a practiced ease. “Be careful.” 

“Doctor,” she chided again, slipping the strap of the gun over her head and grinning at him as she adopted a power stance and serious expression. “Come on, lighten up. Do I look impressively terrifying with a gun?” 

“No.” 

“Liar.” 

“I’m not lying!”

“C’mon, you told me all about the time Rose had one and you thought it made her look badass. You liked it then, no fair.” 

“No bringing up my exes,” he muttered, avoiding her gaze. “Well. Present-s. Present-in-another-dimension-s.” 

“Whatever,” she danced over to him and kissed him on the cheek, determined to maintain a façade of confidence. “Ready for this? We’re with Jack, so do try not to complain about flirting when we’re under fire.” 

“Yes boss.”

“Attaboy,” she grinned up at him, then crossed to Jack’s side and cocked her weapon in readiness for what lay ahead. “Now. Who’s ready to go and save a kid from a totalitarian regime?” 

There was a general, muted hum of assent, and then the UNIT squad moved off, Kate offering the Doctor and Clara a tight smile as she followed them. Clara understood her non-verbal message: _good luck, and I hope I see you on the other side._  

“I can’t tell,” the Doctor said out of nowhere, and when Clara looked up at him she noticed that his eyes were wet with tears. “Whether her dad would be really proud of her for doing this, or if he’d think I was a total prat for letting her. Probably both.”

“It’s… commendable,” Clara agreed, but her throat was dry at the thought that one of their closest friends was willing to put her life on the line for them. Again. “We should take her out for dinner afterwards to show our appreciation.”

“If we live that long.” 

Clara blinked up at him in consternation, unsettled by his phrasing. They were all thinking it, but verbalising the sentiment made it seem real in a way that Clara had been hoping to avoid. Phrases like that involved entertaining the notion that some of them may not survive the mission, and that was a prospect that she was unwilling to consider.

“That was a joke,” he said weakly, noticing the expression on her face. “A really bad joke. Sorry. Shit, sorry. This is all a bit…” 

“I know,” she told him simply, reaching for his hand and squeezing. “Time War-y. But it’s alright. It’s going to be OK, I promise you that. I’m here, and I’ve got a gun, and I won’t let anyone get hurt.”

From outside the storage room, there was the distant sound of gunfire, both human and Time Lord – sharp staccato _cracks_ of rifles, and soft pulsing noises that she recognised as belonging to the futuristic weapons of the Time Lords. She swallowed the fear that was trying to crawl its way up her throat, looking to the Doctor and biting down a wave of panicked nausea, before focusing on steadying her breathing and preventing her hands from shaking. She was no good to anyone if she couldn’t shoot straight, and she clenched her fists before anyone could notice the trembling. 

Jack’s communicator crackled into life, and Clara let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding when she heard Kate’s voice give the simple command. 

_“Go.”_

The Torchwood team burst from the room, following in the wake of the UNIT forces and sticking to makeshift cover wherever possible as they advanced through corridors shrouded in smoke, picking their way across floors strewn with empty casings and – Clara’s stomach lurched – the occasional prone body sprawled on the metallic tiles. Ahead of them, they could hear occasional bursts of gunfire, and as they rounded a corner they found themselves on the fringe of the battle, UNIT soldiers ducked down behind overturned crates as a trio of Time Lords stood brazenly in the middle of the corridor, firing indiscriminately at the intruders. The heat of their laser rifles and the sound of the blasts ricocheting along the metal-lined corridor was overwhelming, and for a second Clara’s vision swam, before she blinked hard and yanked the Doctor into the lee of a crate, priming her weapon in preparation to return fire. 

“Don’t you dare,” the Doctor warned, grabbing her arm and pulling her back to his side. “Stick your head over the top of this thing, and they’ll shoot it off.” 

“Oh, please,” she rolled her eyes at his concern, trying to act more nonchalant than she felt. “Like I haven’t got a plan.” 

“Clara, I’m serious,” he begged, and she felt her resolve wane. “We’re at the base of the Citadel, they won’t be interested in taking prisoners. They’re interested in killing us before we can get anywhere near Emma.”

“Well, we need to get in somehow,” she reasoned, sighing as she realised he would sooner die than allow her to enact her plan. “What did you suggest?” 

“Yes, dearie, what _did_ you suggest?” came a trilling Scottish voice, and Clara jumped as she realised that Missy had appeared beside them, her outfit streaked with dust and what looked horribly like blood. The Time Lady caught Clara’s look of horror and winked, pulling out a compact mirror and reapplying her lipstick with a casual ease, before consigning both back to an inner pocket and rolling her shoulders. “Now, it’s a good thing that good old Missy is here to help you out, isn’t it?” 

“Missy…” the Doctor began, his tone wary, but before he could get any further she’d reached into her pocket and extracted a small silver device, pulling a pin from one side and lobbing it in the general direction of the Time Lord sentries. To the assembled Earth forces’ bewilderment, nothing happened. “What the _hell_ was that?” 

“Patience grenade,” Missy grinned wolfishly. “Borrowed a couple from the British government a while back.”

“A _what_?” Clara asked, frowning. 

“Think musical statues, dear. But when someone moves, it’s more _boom_ than _bump_.”

“Oh,” Clara blinked a few times, trying to think of something more intelligent to say as she came to terms with the information Missy had provided. “Why are you helping us?” 

“Because-”

There was a loud explosion from the end of the corridor, and the entire structure shook with the force of the blast. A few seconds later, as the smoke cleared and the hacking sounding of coughing had erupted around them, Clara cleared her throat and looked to Missy for clarification. 

“Because, dear,” Missy continued, quite unperturbed, as though nothing had happened. “The Time Lords are responsible for driving me to the brink of madness, and frankly, I’d quite like them to suffer for it.” 

“Only to the brink?” the Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Oh, well… they’re responsible for the entire sorry affair, but now’s not the time to nit-pick. Go and find Emma; I’ll stick with your pet soldiers and provide cover.” 

“That’s… very nice of you,” the Doctor said, visibly taken aback by the altruistic offer. Beside him, Clara shucked off her gun and cast it aside, knowing it would impede her as they continued deeper into the fortress of the Time Lords. “Good luck.” 

“Hush dear. Go.” 

After a moment’s hesitation, the Doctor got to his feet, dragging Clara up with him and running in the direction of the earlier explosion. She followed him mechanically, squinting through the cloying, acrid smoke and trying to appraise the situation they were leaving behind.

“Doctor, we can’t just leave-”

“We have to,” he said tersely, ignoring her protests and instead leading her through the corridors. “It’s easier if they distract the security forces and we sneak in while they’re causing a diversion.”

“But-” 

“We don’t have time to argue!” he shouted, yanking her round to face him. “Ashildr is _dead_ , Emma is probably being _brainwashed_ as we speak, we need to _go._ ” 

“Dead?” Clara asked, her stomach dropping. “But…”

“Please,” the Doctor said, his tone bordering on cruel. “You think they’d keep her alive? She brought them what they needed, she had no value to them. She was just a human, and my people _despise_ humans.” 

“You’re scaring me.” 

“Just _run._ ” 

She fell silent in the wake of his command, blinking back tears as she followed him, listening for the recommencement of gunfire behind them. When she heard the next explosion, she offered a silent prayer to a god she barely believed in, pleading for the safety of their friends, before concentrating once more on keeping pace with the Doctor as they ran. They finally skidded to a halt outside a pair of innocuous-looking white doors, a keypad on the wall beside them, and the Doctor grinned inexplicably. 

“What?” Clara asked, chewing her lip as she looked from him to the doors and back again. 

“The keypad… see that green light? It means it’s safe to enter. They haven’t started work on Emma yet. We’re not too late.” 

Clara’s heart leapt, and she exhaled shakily, returning his smile as she realised that Emma was alright, that she was on the other side of the doors, and- 

“Won’t there be Time Lords in there with her?” 

“Oh, yeah,” the Doctor said, extracting the sonic from his pocket and fiddling with the settings. “But the thing about working in the Theatre is that… well. It’s a job reserved for a certain few, and they’re implanted with security chips to stop them divulging secrets to others. You know, how it’s done, that kind of thing. Which for us, is very useful.” 

“Useful how?” 

The Doctor flicked open the sonic and pressed the button, and from inside the room came assorted shouts of agony that would have made Clara’s blood run cold, had those suffering not been about to harm her daughter.

“Useful in that sense,” he explained, pointing the sonic at the keypad and then yanking open the doors. “Come on, it won’t distract them for long.” 

Clara stepped over the threshold first, taking in the oddly majestic surroundings of what was, as far as she was concerned, a torture chamber. Gold inlay spelled out messages in Gallifreyan that covered the walls, and coloured lights danced across the glittering words, sending fragments of refracted light across the floor and staining her shoes with every step. Around the edge of the room, three technicians were clutching at their heads in visible agony, faces contorted, too consumed with pain to pay the intruders any attention, but Clara didn’t spare them so much as a glance. 

Because in the centre of the room stood a raised podium, upon which was a pure-white chair surrounded by banks of switches and dials. But far more important than that, sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the seat, feet swinging and a smile upon her face, was Emma. 

Clara began to cry, stumbling the last few steps and scooping the little girl up, feeling her daughter’s arms wrap around her neck as mother and daughter were reunited at last. Her heart soared and she pressed kisses to Emma’s hair as she wept with joy, revelling in the feeling of her daughter in her arms once more. 

“Mummy,” Emma sobbed, burying her face in Clara’s neck and clinging to her in fear that they might be ripped apart once again. “Mummy.”

“I’ve got you,” Clara promised, looking around for the Doctor. “And dad-”

The last thing she saw before the explosion was the Doctor, racing towards them with his arms outstretched. 

Then everything went black.

 

* * *

 

When she opened her eyes again, she was being carried. That was her first realisation, followed by a warm sense of relief as she became aware that Emma was still nestled against her chest, safe in the cocoon of her arms. 

“Hi,” the little girl said, reaching up to stroke her mother’s cheek. “You were out for ages.” 

“Mm,” Clara said, blinking to clear her vision before looking around at her surroundings. Above them was the burnt orange sky of Gallifrey, and after a moment’s confusion she realised whose arms she was in. “Doctor?” 

“Hey,” he said quietly, shifting her so that he could offer her a small smile, before he lost his footing and stumbled, cursing under his breath as he fought to regain his balance and not drop his wife and child. “Shit.” 

“I can get down,” she offered, hopping down before he could stop her, and it was then that she was able to look around properly. “Oh.” 

They were stood atop an enormous mound of rubble, twisted metal columns punching through the stone at regular intervals, and smoke rising in lazy spirals that were drifting up to the ochre sky. Shards of glass glittered in the wreckage, and Clara turned in a circle, taking in the devastation in mute silence as she tried to process where they were and what had caused such destruction.

“What happened?” she asked in horror, failing to comprehend where they were stood. “What… was this…”

“Missy,” he said grimly, and Clara realised the answer should have been obvious. “Don’t worry though… everyone from Earth’s safe. She’s not a total maniac.” 

“I’d refute that,” Emma argued, her tone light but one hand clinging to her mother’s top for comfort. “Strongly.” 

“How the hell…” 

“Well now,” mused a familiar voice, and Clara turned on her heel to take in the sight of Missy, stood atop a pile of rubble, with her limbs arranged artfully in a triumphant pose. “It’s not my fault that the idiots filled their entire Citadel with vibranium, is it?” 

“Vibranium is made up, Missy, it’s from _Captain America._ I’m not stupid.” 

“Well, where did you think Marvel got the idea from, dearie?” Missy rolled her eyes. “All it took was finding the right sonic resonance, and _boom_. Up went their little Citadel, with all of them still in it.”

“You’re insane.” 

“No, I’m vengeful, there’s a difference,” Missy looked down at mother and child and smiled, some of her bluster dissipating as she took in the sight of Emma, restored to her rightful place in Clara’s arms. “Hello, little one.”

“Hello, megalomaniac,” Emma retorted with a practiced disdain. “Thanks for saving us, I guess.” 

“Isn’t she charming?” Missy cooed, chuckling lightly. “Don’t you worry, darling, I’m here to broker a deal with your daddy.” 

“And here was me thinking you were gloating,” the Doctor muttered. “Silly me.” 

“That too. Now. It’s nice and simple: I’ll leave you three be, if you let me have free reign to apprehend a… prisoner of interest.” 

“And that prisoner would be?” the Doctor asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. 

“Rassilon,” Missy gestured grandly to the other side of her pile-of-rubble-cum-stage, and the trio circled it to take in the sight of the bloodied and beaten Lord President, knelt submissively in the dust with his hands bound behind his back. “Ta-dah.”

“Please,” the old man begged, looking up at the three of them with a desperate expression. “Don’t leave me alone with her.” 

“You know what?” Clara said, keeping her voice carefully neutral as she looked to her husband and shrugged. “I actually really like Missy’s idea.” 

“I couldn’t agree more,” he concurred, smirking. “Emma?” 

“I think it’s a very good idea.” 

“Well then,” Missy trilled, beaming from ear to ear. “Oh, Rassy, darling, we are going to have _so_ much fun!” 

“Please,” he begged again. “Doctor… Ms Oswald…”

The Doctor turned his back on his planet’s former leader, slipping an arm around Clara’s waist in lieu of looking at the remains of the Citadel. “We should get going,” he murmured, using his free hand to stroke their daughter’s hair back from her face. “The HADS has relocated the TARDIS out to the Drylands, it’ll be quite the walk.” 

“Well,” Clara replied, pressing a kiss to Emma’s temple and then smiling up at her husband. “We _have_ got an awful lot of catching up to do…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Sherlock for the patience grenade, and Marvel for vibranium.


	21. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of the fall of Gallifrey, the family make peace with the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo! We've reached the end of our saga. It's been amazing, and I love you all immensely, particularly those of you who have stuck with this from the beginning - way back at the start of _Something Dumb_. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it, as it's been a blast! I may well come back to our little family at some point in the future... we shall have to see.

To the untrained eye, the three people clustered around a grave in Woodlawn Cemetery might have looked like three generations of the same family. An older man with silver hair and a bizarre velvet jacket was stood beside a woman in her mid-thirties, who in turn held a small child in her arms, all three of them looking down at the newly-cleaned headstone in subdued silence.

By and large they remained undisturbed in their vigil – the first groundsman to address them upon their arrival had received a look so black that he’d taken several steps back from the family in consternation, and after that they had been left in peace to mourn as they saw fit. Nonetheless, confusion had been generally wide-ranging when the old gravestone had been amended, and now the staff of the cemetery were eyeing up the small family, trying to deduce their relation to any of the people named on the granite. 

“The groundskeepers are staring again,” Clara said under her breath, side-eyeing a gardener a few rows over who immediately scurried to look busy, and she bit back a laugh at his flustered panic. “Maybe we should give them something to stare at.” 

“Mummy, this is a cemetery,” Emma shot her mother a withering look. “No.” 

“Oh, come on. Like River wouldn’t love the idea of us snogging here,” Clara reasoned, leaning up and kissing her husband before he could object, smiling as she pulled away and caught sight of the gardener dropping his trowel. She laughed, then sighed, turning her gaze back to the headstone before them. “That was for you.” 

_In loving memory_

_Rory Arthur Williams_

_Aged 82_

_And his loving wife_

_Amelia Williams_

_Aged 87_

_As well as their daughter_

_River Song (née Melody Pond)_

_Aged 45_

“I feel like she’d be mad we listed her as being forty-five,” Clara observed, grimacing as she imagined River’s reaction to the inscription. “And not, like, thirty.”

“She’s lucky we didn’t put ‘somewhere over two hundred, honestly we lost count’,” the Doctor shot back, arching an eyebrow. “That _really_ would’ve confused the groundskeepers.”

“She’d have loved that,” Clara sighed, setting Emma down and watching as the little girl toddled over to the headstone, placing her palm against the cool stone in quiet reverence. “She’d have loved knowing she was buried _here_ , it’s gorgeous.” 

“Remember how much she used to like visiting?” the Doctor recalled, his eyes growing damp with tears that he swiped away with his sleeve before continuing. “Before she was with us… she’d always do her best to stop by to make sure the grave was tidy and there were flowers. Even in the depths of winter she’d make sure that there were flowers here, because she didn’t want Rory and Amy to feel like nobody remembered them.” He paused. “She told me once that she used to like signing the visitors’ book with made up names, just to confuse the people who worked here and keep herself mysterious.”

“She liked being mysterious,” Emma said with a sad smile, looking up at her parents. “Even now.” 

Clara shuddered and cast her mind back to the phone call they had received from Missy weeks before, remembering the Time Lady’s unusually subdued tone as she told them of Rassilon’s confession: that although he had killed River, his soldiers had made sure that her remains were cremated and scattered, ensuring that there was nothing left for her partners to bury. Nothing to honour or keep, but they’d made the decision to commemorate her here anyway, her name engraved next to those of her parents in the quiet serenity of a wooded burial ground tucked deep in the heart of New York. 

“I miss her,” Clara said quietly, leaning against the Doctor and placing one palm against his chest to seek the comforting double beat of his hearts. Her voice trembled slightly as she added: “All the time.” 

“I know,” he pressed a kiss to her hair, falling silent for several long moments before admitting: “So do I. You never know though… we might end up bumping into her again one of these days. She always did have a habit of turning up in the wrong order.” 

“That she did,” Clara chuckled, crouching to minutely adjust the wreath of flowers they had brought with them and then holding her hand out to Emma. “Come on, you. Why don’t we go exploring before your dad gets bored and complains about a lack of aliens to outsmart? River wouldn’t want us moping about in the Big Apple.” 

“I like that idea,” Emma replied, crossing back to her mother and taking her hand, chewing her lip before chancing her luck and asking: “Can we have ice cream?” 

“It’s autumn.” 

“Aww, don’t ruin the wee lass’s fun,” the Doctor complained, bending down and scooping their daughter into his arms. “Yes, we can have ice cream.” 

“Dear god, you are such a pushover,” Clara rolled her eyes as they began to head back towards the entrance to the cemetery, but her tone was without real irritation. She was getting used to his random acts of acquiescing to Emma’s will, especially since Gallifrey, and she was resigning herself to simply going along with whatever scheme he proposed.  “Still love you, though.” 

He wrinkled his nose, poking his tongue out at her as Emma giggled at the banter. “Still love you too.” 

“And me?” Emma asked, looking between them with wide eyes. 

“We love you to the end of the universe and back, munchkin.” 

Emma smiled, falling silent as she twisted in her father’s arms to take in the sight of autumn in New York; rows of copper-leaved trees surrounded by carpets of fallen, rust-coloured foliage that were beautiful now but would turn treacherous come winter. A gust of wind knocked a flurry of leaves free from a branch above her parents’ heads, and she reached up to grab at them, catching one and holding it aloft with triumph, twirling it as she began to recite a well-rehearsed family legend. 

“The most important leaf in-” she began, before she was interrupted by an indignant shriek from behind them. 

“ _Forty-five?!_ Which bastard put me on this thing, and which arsehole thought I was _forty-five_?!”


End file.
